PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
Sonnet 25: Let those who are in favour with their stars
by William Shakespeare

Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:
Then happy I, that love and am beloved
Where I may not remove nor be removed.

Form: sonnet
Upon the Loss of his Mistresses
by Robert Herrick

I have lost, and lately, these
Many dainty mistresses:
Stately Julia, prime of all;
Sappho next, a principal;
Smooth Anthea, for a skin
White, and heaven-like crystalline;
Sweet Electra, and the choice
Myrrha, for the lute, and voice;
Next, Corinna, for her wit,
And the graceful use of it;
With Perilla; all are gone;
Only Herrick's left alone
For to number sorrow by
Their departures hence, and die.

Form: couplet
Astrophil and Stella 23: The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness
by Sir Philip Sidney

The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness
Bewray itself in my long-settl'd eyes,
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise,
With idle pains and missing aim do guess.
Some, that know how my spring I did address,
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies;
Others, because the prince my service tries,
Think that I think state errors to redress;
But harder judges judge ambition's ragei
Scourge of itself, still climbing slipp'ry placei
Holds my young brain captiv'd in golden cage.
O fool or over-wise! alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start
But only Stella's eyes and Stella's heart.

Form: sonnet
Confessions
by Robert Browning

What is he buzzing in my ears?
   "Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
   Ah, reverend sir, not I!

 What I viewed there once, what I view again
   Where the physic bottles stand
On the table's edge,—is a suburb lane,
   With a wall to my bedside hand.

 That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
   From a house you could descry
O'er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue
   Or green to a healthy eye?

 To mine, it serves for the old June weather
   Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"
   Is the house o'ertopping all.

 At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
   There watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,
   My poor mind's out of tune.

 Only, there was a way... you crept
   Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
   They styled their house "The Lodge."

 What right had a lounger up their lane?
   But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall's help,—their eyes might strain
   And stretch themselves to Oes,

 Yet never catch her and me together,
   As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether,"
   And stole from stair to stair,

 And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
   We loved, sir—used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was—
   But then, how it was sweet!

Form: ballad
Hamlet, Act III, Scene II [Nay, do not think I flatter]
by William Shakespeare

Hamlet speaks to Horatio

Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.—Something too much of this.—
There is a play to-night before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father's death:
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

Form: dramatic monologue
The Burial of the Rev. George Gilfillan
by Knight of the White Elephant of Burmah William McGonagall

On the Gilfillan burial day,
In the Hill o’ Balgay,
It was a most solemn sight to see,
Not fewer than thirty thousand people assembled in Dundee,
All watching the funeral procession of Gilfillan that day,
That death had suddenly taken away,
And was going to be buried in the Hill o’ Balgay.

There were about three thousand people in the procession alone,
And many were shedding tears, and several did moan,
And their bosoms heaved with pain,
Because they knew they would never look upon his like again.

There could not be fewer than fifty carriages in the procession that day,
And gentlemen in some of them that had come from far away,
And in whispers some of them did say,
As the hearse bore the precious corpse away,
Along the Nethergate that day.

I’m sure he will be greatly missed by the poor,
For he never turned them empty-handed away from his door;
And to assist them in distress it didn’t give him pain,
And I’m sure the poor will never look upon his like again.

On the Gilfillan burial day, in the Hill o’ Balgay,
There was a body of policemen marshalled in grand array,
And marched in front of the procession all the way;
Also the relatives and friends of the deceas’d,
Whom I hope from all sorrows has been releas’d,
And whose soul I hope to heaven has fled away,
To sing with saints above for ever and aye.

The Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council were in the procession that day;
Also Mrs Gilfillan, who cried and sobbed all the way
For her kind husband, that was always affable and gay,
Which she will remember until her dying day.

When the procession arrived in the Hill o’ Balgay,
The people were almost as hush as death, and many of them did say—
As long as we live we’ll remember the day
That the great Gilfillan was buried in the Hill o’Balgay.

When the body of the great Gilfillan was lowered into the grave,
’Twas then the people’s hearts with sorrow did heave;
And with tearful eyes and bated breath,
Mrs Gilfillan lamented her loving husband’s death.

Then she dropped a ringlet of immortelles into his grave,
Then took one last fond look, and in sorrow did leave;
And all the people left with sad hearts that day,
And that ended the Gilfillan burial in the Hill o’ Balgay.

Form: elegy
To the Ladies
by Lady Mary Chudleigh

Wife and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name:
For when that fatal knot is tied,
Which nothing, nothing can divide:
When she the word obey has said,
And man by law supreme has made,
Then all that’s kind is laid aside,
And nothing left but state and pride:
Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows,
And all his innate rigour shows:
Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,
Will the nuptial contract break.
Like mutes she signs alone must make,
And never any freedom take:
But still be governed by a nod,
And fear her husband as a God:
Him still must serve, him still obey,
And nothing act, and nothing say,
But what her haughty lord thinks fit,
Who with the power, has all the wit.
Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state,
And all the fawning flatt’rers hate:
Value your selves, and men despise,
You must be proud, if you’ll be wise.

Form: couplet
What's in the brain that ink may character (Sonnet 108)
by William Shakespeare

What’s in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What’s new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o’er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine. I thine,
Even as when first I hallow’d thy far name.
So that eternal love in love’s fresh case
Weights not the dust and the injury of the age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
    Finding the first conceit of love there bred
    Where time and outward form would show it dead.

Form: sonnet
Astrophil and Stella 71: Who will in fairest book of nature know
by Sir Philip Sidney

Who will in fairest book of nature know
How virtue may best lodg'd in beauty be,
Let him but learn of love to read in thee,
Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.
There shall he find all vices' overthrow,
Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty
Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly;
That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.
And, not content to be perfection's heir
Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move,
Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair.
So while thy beauty draws thy heart to love,
As fast thy virtue bends that love to good:
But "Ah," Desire still cries, "Give me some food!"

Form: sonnet
Fog
by Louise Imogen Guiney

Like bodiless water passing in a sigh,
Thro’ palsied streets the fatal shadows flow,
And in their sharp disastrous undertow
Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky.
The towery vista sinks upon the eye,
As if it heard the Hebrew bugles blow,
Black and dissolved; nor could the founders know
How what was built so bright should daily die.

Thy mood with man’s is broken and blent in,
City of Stains! And ache of thought doth drown
The primitive light in which thy life began;
Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin,
Greater and elder yet the love of man
Full in thy look, tho’ the dark visor’s down.

Form: sonnet
The Virgin
by William Wordsworth

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied.
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

Form: sonnet
As an unperfect actor on the stage (Sonnet 23)
by William Shakespeare

As an unperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart,
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own loves’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharged with burden of mine one love’s might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
    O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
    To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine writ.

Form: sonnet
The Hosts
by Alan Seeger

Purged, with the life they left, of all
That makes life paltry and mean and small,
In their new dedication charged
With something heightened, enriched, enlarged,
That lends a light to their lusty brows
And a song to the rhythm of their trampling feet,
These are the men that have taken vows,
These are the hardy, the flower, the élite,—
These are the men that are moved no more
By the will to traffic and grasp and store
And ring with pleasure and wealth and love
The circles that self is the centre of;
But they are moved by the powers that force
The sea for ever to ebb and rise,
That hold Arcturus in his course,
And marshal at noon in tropic skies
The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain
And drift out over the peopled plain.
They are big with the beauty of cosmic things.
Mark how their columns surge! They seem
To follow the goddess with outspread wings
That points toward Glory, the soldier's dream.
With bayonets bare and flags unfurled,
They scale the summits of the world
And fade on the farthest golden height
In fair horizons full of light.

Comrades in arms there—friend or foe—
That trod the perilous, toilsome trail
Through a world of ruin and blood and woe
In the years of great decision—hail!
Friend or foe, it shall matter nought;
This only matters, in fine: we fought.
For we were young and in love or strife
Sought exultation and craved excess:
To sound the wildest debauch in life
We staked our youth and its loveliness.
Let idlers argue the right and wrong
And weigh what merit our causes had.
Putting our faith in being strong—
Above the level of good and bad—
For us, we battled and burned and killed
Because evolving Nature willed,
And it was our pride and boast to be
The instruments of Destiny.
There was a stately drama writ
By the hand that peopled the earth and air
And set the stars in the infinite
And made night gorgeous and morning fair,
And all that had sense to reason knew
That bloody drama must be gone through.
Some sat and watched how the action veered—
Waited, profited, trembled, cheered—
We saw not clearly nor understood,
But yielding ourselves to the master hand,
Each in his part as best he could,
We played it through as the author planned.

Form: couplet
Thompson’s Lunch Room—Grand Central Station
by Amy Lowell

STUDY IN WHITES
Wax-white—
Floor, ceiling, walls.   
Ivory shadows
Over the pavement   
Polished to cream surfaces
By constant sweeping.
The big room is coloured like the petals
Of a great magnolia,   
And has a patina   
Of flower bloom
Which makes it shine dimly
Under the electric lamps.
Chairs are ranged in rows
Like sepia seeds   
Waiting fulfilment.
The chalk-white spot of a cook’s cap
Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall—
Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow
Thru the wavering uncertainty of steam.
Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections,
Ice-green carboys, shifting—greener, bluer—with the jar of moving water.
Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass
Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar
Above the lighthouse-shaped castors
Of grey pepper and grey-white salt.
Grey-white placards: “Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters”:
Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines.   
Dropping on the white counter like horn notes
Through a web of violins,
The flat yellow lights of oranges,
The cube-red splashes of apples,
In high plated épergnes.
The electric clock jerks every half-minute:
“Coming!—Past!”
“Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,”
Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily.
A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair.
Two rice puddings and a salmon salad
Are pushed over the counter;
The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them.
A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal striking stone,
And the sound throws across the room
Sharp, invisible zigzags
Of silver.

Form: free verse
[Ah! the waving lespedeza,]
by Matsuo Bashō

Ah! the waving lespedeza,
Which spills not a drop
Of the clear dew!

Form: haiku
Song to Amarantha, that she would Dishevel her Hair
by Richard Lovelace

Amarantha sweet and fair
Ah braid no more that shining hair!
   As my curious hand or eye
Hovering round thee let it fly.

   Let it fly as unconfin’d
As its calm ravisher, the wind,
   Who hath left his darling th’East,
To wanton o’er that spicy nest.

   Ev’ry tress must be confest
But neatly tangled at the best;
   Like a clue of golden thread,
Most excellently ravelled.

   Do not then wind up that light
In ribands, and o’er-cloud in night;
   Like the sun in’s early ray,
But shake your head and scatter day.

   See ’tis broke! Within this grove
The bower, and the walks of love,
   Weary lie we down and rest,
And fan each other’s panting breast.

   Here we’ll strip and cool our fire
In cream below, in milk-baths higher:
   And when all wells are drawn dry,
I’ll drink a tear out of thine eye,

   Which our very joys shall leave
That sorrows thus we can deceive;
   Or our very sorrows weep,
That joys so ripe, so little keep.

Form: couplet
Sonnet 107: Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
by William Shakespeare

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

Form: sonnet
Mother
by Luis G. Dato

When evenings cast pale shadows on the earth,
And silence, like a vast mysterious ghost,
Stifles the land and sea from hill to coast,
And buries all that tropic suns gave birth,
When by myself I pace the darkened shore,
And think of this unhappy lot of mine,
The pain and grief the fates to me assign,
I sigh for you, O mother I adore!
That I could seek your bosom as of old,
And, nestling there, bare secrets that oppress,
Accuse these that my love would disposses,
Whose hearts to cold desires and base are sold!
O mother dear! When death relieves our sighs,
Shall we in heaven, meet, in Paradise?

Form: sonnet
Sonnet to Liberty
by Oscar Wilde

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,—
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea,—
And give my rage a brother——! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.

Form: sonnet
Each and All
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky; —
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she stayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; —
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth:" —
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird; —
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

Form: couplet
An Epitaph on S.P.
by Ben Jonson

A Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel

Weep with me, all you that read
     This little story:
And know, for whom a tear you shed
     Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child, that so did thrive
     In grace and feature,
As heaven and nature seem'd to strive
     Which own'd the creature.
Years he number'd scarce thirteen
     When fates turn'd cruel,
Yet three fill'd zodiacs had he been
     The stage's jewel;
And did act (what now we moan)
     Old men so duly,
As, sooth, the Parcæ thought him one,
     He play'd so truly.
So, by error, to his fate
     They all consented;
But viewing him since (alas, too late)
     They have repented;
And have sought (to give new birth)
     In baths to steep him;
But being so much too good for earth,
     Heaven vows to keep him.

Form: elegy
Two Went up into the Temple to Pray
by Richard Crashaw

Two went to pray? O rather say
One went to brag, th’ other to pray:

 One stands up close and treads on high,
Where th’ other dares not send his eye.

 One nearer to God’s altar trod,
The other to the altar’s God.

Form: couplet
Sonnet 15: When I consider everything that grows
by William Shakespeare

When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

Form: sonnet
A Dream Pang
by Robert Frost

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
You shook your pensive head as who should say,
‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.’

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

Form: sonnet