PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
The Story of Phœbus and Daphne, Applied
by Edmund Waller

Thyrsis, a youth of the inspired train,
Fair Sacharissa lov’d, but lov’d in vain;
Like Phœbus sung the no less amorous boy;
Like Daphne she, as lovely, and as coy;
With numbers he the flying nymph pursues,
With numbers such as Phœbus’ self might use;
Such is the chase when Love and Fancy leads,
O’er craggy mountains, and through flow’ry meads;
Invok’d to testify the lover’s care,
Or form some image of his cruel fair:
Urg’d with his fury, like a wounded deer,
O’er these he fled; and now approaching near,
Had reach’d the nymph with his harmonious lay,
Whom all his charms could not incline to stay.
Yet what he sung in his immortal strain,
Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain;
All but the nymph that should redress his wrong,
Attend his passion, and approve his song.
Like Phœbus thus, acquiring unsought praise,
He catch’d at love, and fill’d his arm with bays.

Form: couplet
The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow
by William Blake

A little black thing among the snow,
Crying "weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? say?"
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil'd among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

Form: dramatic monologue
What Kind of Mistress He would Have
by Robert Herrick

Be the mistress of my choice,
Clean in manners, clear in voice;
Be she witty, more than wise,
Pure enough, though not precise;
Be she showing in her dress,
Like a civil wilderness,
That the curious may detect
Order in a sweet neglect;
Be she rolling in her eye,
Tempting all the passers by;
And each ringlet of her hair,
An enchantment, or a snare,
For to catch the lookers on;
But herself held fast by none.
Let her Lucrece all day be,
Thais in the night, to me.
Be she such, as neither will
Famish me, nor overfill.

Form: couplet
Army of Occupation
by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

At Arlington, 1866

The summer blew its little drifts of sound—
     Tangled with wet leaf-shadows and the light
 Small breath of scattered morning buds—around
 The yellow path through which our footsteps wound.
     Below, the Capitol rose glittering white.
  
 There stretched a sleeping army. One by one,
     They took their places until thousands met;
 No leader’s stars flashed on before, and none
 Leaned on his sword or stagger’d with his gun—
     I wonder if their feet have rested yet!
  
 They saw the dust, they joined the moving mass,
     They answer’d the fierce music’s cry for blood,
 Then straggled here and lay down in the grass:—
 Wear flowers for such, shores whence their feet did pass;
     Sing tenderly; O river’s haunted flood!
  
 They had been sick, and worn, and weary, when
     They stopp’d on this calm hill beneath the trees:
 Yet if, in some red-clouded dawn, again
 The country should be calling to her men,
     Shall the r[e]veill[e] not remember these?
  
 Around them underneath the mid-day skies
     The dreadful phantoms of the living walk,
 And by low moons and darkness with their cries—
 The mothers, sisters, wives with faded eyes,
     Who call still names amid their broken talk.
  
 And there is one who comes alone and stands
     At his dim fireless hearth—chill’d and oppress’d
 By Something he had summon’d to his lands,
 While the weird pallor of its many hands
     Points to his rusted sword in his own breast!

Form: quatrain
The Old Man's Complaints. And how he gained them
by Robert Southey

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
    The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
    Now tell me the reason I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
    I remember'd that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first
    That I never might need them at last.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
    And pleasures with youth pass away,
And yet you lament not the days that are gone,
    Now tell me the reason I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
    I remember'd that youth could not last;
I thought of the future whatever I did,
    That I never might grieve for the past.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
    And life must be hastening away;
You are chearful, and love to converse upon death!
    Now tell me the reason I pray.
I am chearful, young man, Father William replied,
    Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember'd my God!
    And He hath not forgotten my age.

Form: quatrain
Little Robin Redbreast
by Anonymous

Little Robin Redbreast
    Sat upon a tree;
Up went Pussy-cat,
    Down went he.

Down came Pussy-cat,
    And away Robin ran;
Says little Robin Redbreast
    “Catch me if you can.”

Little Robin Redbreast
    Hopped upon a wall;
Pussy-cat jumped after him,
    And almost got a fall.

Little Robin chirped and sang,
    And what did Pussy say?
Pussy-cat said “Mew,”
    and Robin flew away.

Form: ballad
Book 3, Epigram 36
by Thomas Bastard

The peasant Corus of his wealth does boast,
 Yet he’s scarce worth twice twenty pounds at most.
 I chanc’d to word once with this lowly swain,
 He called me base, and beggar in disdain.
 To try the truth hereof I rate myself,
 And cast the little count of all my wealth.
 See how much Hebrew, Greek, and Poetry,
 Latin Rhetoric, and Philosophy,
      Reading, and sense in sciences profound,
      All valued, are not worth forty pounds.

Form: couplet
Remember Not
by Helene Johnson

Remember not the promises we made
In this same garden many moons ago.
You must forget them. I would have it so.
Old vows are like old flowers as they fade
And vaguely vanish in a feeble death.
There is no reason why your hands should clutch
At pretty yesterdays. There is not much
Of beauty in me now. And though my breath
Is quick, my body sentient, my heart
Attuned to romance as before, you must
Not, through mistaken chivalry, pretend
To love me still. There is no mortal art
Can overcome Time’s deep, corroding rust.
Let Love’s beginning expiate Love’s end.

Form: sonnet
Prologue
by Anne Bradstreet

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,
Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun,
For my mean Pen are too superior things;
Or how they all, or each their dates have run,
Let Poets and Historians set these forth.
My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.

But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart
Great Bartas’ sugar’d lines do but read o’er,
Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part
‘Twixt him and me that over-fluent store.
A Bartas can do what a Bartas will
But simple I according to my skill.

From School-boy’s tongue no Rhet’ric we expect,
Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings,
Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect.
My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings,
And this to mend, alas, no Art is able,
‘Cause Nature made it so irreparable.

Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek
Who lisp’d at first, in future times speak plain.
By Art he gladly found what he did seek,
A full requital of his striving pain.
Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure:
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.
A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on female wits.
If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,
They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild,
Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine
And poesy made Calliope’s own child?
So ‘mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine,
But this weak knot they will full soon untie.
The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie.

Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are.
Men have precedency and still excel;
It is but vain unjustly to wage war.
Men can do best, and Women know it well.
Preeminence in all and each is yours;
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
And ever with your prey still catch your praise,
If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays.
This mean and unrefined ore of mine
Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine.

Form: couplet
Misgivings
by Herman Melville

When ocean-clouds over inland hills
   Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
 And horror the sodden valley fills,
   And the spire falls crashing in the town,
 I muse upon my country’s ills—
 The tempest bursting from the waste of Time
On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime.

 Nature’s dark side is heeded now—
   (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)—
 A child may read the moody brow
   Of yon black mountain lone.
 With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
 And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

Form: sonnet
Book 2, Epigram 8
by Thomas Bastard

Walking the fields a wantcatcher I spied,
 To him I went, desirous of his game:
 Sir, have you taken wants? Yes, he replied,
 Here are a dozen, which were lately ta’en.
 Then you have left no more. No more? quoth he.
 Sir I can show you more: the more the worse;
 And to his work he went, but 'twould not be,
 For all the wants were crept into my purse.
      Farewell friend wantcatcher, since 'twill not be,
      Thou cannot catch the wants, but they catch me.
 ﻿

Form: couplet
The Artist
by Amy Lowell

Why do you subdue yourself in golds and purples?   
Why do you dim yourself with folded silks?
Do you not see that I can buy brocades in any draper’s shop,   
And that I am choked in the twilight of all these colors.
How pale you would be, and startling—  
How quiet;
But your curves would spring upward   
Like a clear jet of flung water,
You would quiver like a shot-up spray of water,   
You would waver, and relapse, and tremble.   
And I too should tremble,
Watching.

Murex-dyes and tinsel—
And yet I think I could bear your beauty unshaded.

Form: free verse
Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII [If it were done when 'tis done]
by William Shakespeare

Enter Macbeth.

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust;
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.

Form: dramatic monologue
For shame! Deny that thou bear'st love to any (Sonnet 10)
by William Shakespeare

For shame! Deny that thou bear’st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident.
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved to many,
But that thou none lovest is most evident;
For thou art so possess’d with murderous hate
That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire
O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:
    Make thee another self, for love of me,
    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

Form: sonnet
The Cenotaph
by Charlotte Mew

Not yet will those measureless fields be green again
 Where only yesterday the wild sweet blood of wonderful youth was shed;
 There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain,
 Though for ever over it we may speak as proudly as we may tread.
 But here, where the watchers by lonely hearths from the thrust of an inward sword have more slowly bled,
 We shall build the Cenotaph: Victory, winged, with Peace, winged too, at the column's head.
 And over the stairway, at the foot—oh! here, leave desolate, passionate hands to spread
 Violets, roses, and laurel with the small sweet twinkling country things
 Speaking so wistfully of other Springs
 From the little gardens of little places where son or sweetheart was born and bred.
 In splendid sleep, with a thousand brothers
      To lovers—to mothers
      Here, too, lies he:
 Under the purple, the green, the red,
 It is all young life: it must break some women's hearts to see
 Such a brave, gay coverlet to such a bed!
 Only, when all is done and said,
 God is not mocked and neither are the dead.
 For this will stand in our Market-place—
      Who'll sell, who'll buy
      (Will you or I
 Lie each to each with the better grace)?
 While looking into every busy whore's and huckster's face
 As they drive their bargains, is the Face
 Of God: and some young, piteous, murdered face.

Form: elegy
Scorn not the Sonnet
by William Wordsworth

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

Form: sonnet
The Host of the Air
by W. B. Yeats

O’Driscoll drove with a song,
The wild duck and the drake,
From the tall and the tufted weeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.

And he saw how the weeds grew dark
At the coming of night tide,
And he dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.

He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level place
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.

The dancers crowded about him,
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.

But Bridget drew him by the sleeve,
Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.

The bread and the wine had a doom,
For these were the host of the air;
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.

He played with the merry old men,
And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.

He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.

O’Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like drifting smoke;

But he heard high up in the air
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

Form: ballad
The Embankment
by T. E. Hulme

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night.)

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

Form: free verse
Charleston
by Henry Timrod

Calm as that second summer which precedes
        The first fall of the snow,
 In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds,
        The City bides the foe.
  
 As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud,
        Her bolted thunders sleep—
 Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,
        Looms o’er the solemn deep.
  
 No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar
        To guard the holy strand;
 But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war
        Above the level sand.
  
 And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,
        Unseen, beside the flood—
 Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched
         That wait and watch for blood.
  
 Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,
        Walk grave and thoughtful men,
 Whose hands may one day wield the patriot’s blade
        As lightly as the pen.
  
 And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim
        Over a bleeding hound,
 Seem each one to have caught the strength of him
        Whose sword she sadly bound.
  
 Thus girt without and garrisoned at home,
        Day patient following day,
 Old Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and dome,
        Across her tranquil bay.
  
 Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands
        And spicy Indian ports,
 Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands,
        And summer to her courts.
  
 But still, along you dim Atlantic line,
        The only hostile smoke
 Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine,
        From some frail, floating oak.
  
 Shall the spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles,
        And with an unscathed brow,
 Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles,
        As fair and free as now?
  
 We know not; in the temple of the Fates
        God has inscribed her doom;
 And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits
        The triumph or the tomb.

Form: quatrain
The Hand and Foot
by Jones Very

The hand and foot that stir not, they shall find
Sooner than all the rightful place to go;
Now in their motion free as roving wind,
Though first no snail more limited and slow;
I mark them full of labor all the day,
Each active motion made in perfect rest;
They cannot from their path mistaken stray,
Though ’tis not theirs, yet in it they are blest;
The bird has not their hidden track found out,
Nor cunning fox, though full of art he be;
It is the way unseen, the certain route,
Where ever bound, yet thou art ever free;
The path of Him, whose perfect law of love
Bids spheres and atoms in just order move.

Form: sonnet
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect (Sonnet 70)
by William Shakespeare

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being woo’d of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And hour present’st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast pass’d by the ambush of young days,
Either not assail’d or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy evermore enlarged:
    If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show,
    Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

Form: sonnet
Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard
by Leigh Hunt

We, the Fairies, blithe and antic,
Of dimensions not gigantic,
Though the moonshine mostly keep us,
Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,
Stolen kisses much completer,
Stolen looks are nice in chapels,
Stolen, stolen, be your apples.

When to bed the world are bobbing,
Then's the time for orchard-robbing;
Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
Were it not for stealing, stealing.

Form: couplet
Not marble nor the gilded monuments (Sonnet 55)
by William Shakespeare

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
    So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
    You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

Form: sonnet
Finis
by Waring Cuney

Now that our love has drifted
To a quiet close,
Leaving the empty ache
That always follows when beauty goes;
Now that you and I,
Who stood tip-toe on earth
To touch our fingers to the sky,
Have turned away
To allow our little love to die—
Go, dear, seek again the magic touch.
But if you are wise,
As I shall be wise,
You will not again
Love over much.

Form: sonnet
Should the Wide World Roll Away
by Stephen Crane

X

Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way.

Form: free verse
Modern Love: XXIX
by George Meredith

Am I failing? For no longer can I cast
A glory round about this head of gold.
Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
Not like the consecration of the Past!
Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth
I cry for still: I cannot be at peace
In having Love upon a mortal lease.
I cannot take the woman at her worth!
Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed
Our human nakedness, and could endow
With spiritual splendour a white brow
That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed?
A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea.
But, as you will! we’ll sit contentedly,
And eat our pot of honey on the grave.

Form: sonnet