PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
The Starlight Night
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
   Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
   Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! 
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
   Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
   Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

Form: sonnet
November, 1806
by William Wordsworth

Another year!—another deadly blow!
Another mighty Empire overthrown!
And We are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dare to struggle with the Foe.
'Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low.
O dastard whom such foretaste doth not cheer!
We shall exult, if they who rule the land
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a servile band,
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand.

Form: sonnet
Modern Love: XX
by George Meredith

I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice, and, daring not to snap,
Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap
Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails,
Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,
I know the devil has sufficient weight
To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate.
Besides, he’s damned. That man I do suspect
A coward, who would burden the poor deuce
With what ensues from his own slipperiness.
I have just found a wanton-scented tress
In an old desk, dusty for lack of use.
Of days and nights it is demonstrative,
That, like some aged star, gleam luridly.
If for those times I must ask charity,
Have I not any charity to give?

Form: sonnet
Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers
by Jonathan Swift

Ye poets ragged and forlorn,
      Down from your garrets haste;
Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born,
      Not yet consign'd to paste;

   I know a trick to make you thrive;
      O, 'tis a quaint device:
Your still-born poems shall revive,
      And scorn to wrap up spice.

   Get all your verses printed fair,
      Then let them well be dried;
And Curll must have a special care
      To leave the margin wide.

   Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;
      And when he sets to write,
No letter with an envelope
      Could give him more delight.

   When Pope has fill'd the margins round,
      Why then recall your loan;
Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,
      And swear they are your own.

Form: common measure
Listening
by Amy Lowell

’T is you that are the music, not your song.
  The song is but a door which, opening wide,
  Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sing but of you. Throughout your whole life long
  Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
  This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
  The song of earth has many different chords;
Ocean has many moods and many tones
  Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods
The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones
  Autumn alone can ripen. So is this
  One music with a thousand cadences.

Form: sonnet
The Character of Holland
by Andrew Marvell

(excerpt)

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but th’ off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heav’d the lead;
Or what by th’ ocean’s slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrack’d cockle and the mussel-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad then, as miners that have found the ore,
They with mad labour fish’d the land to shore;
And div’d as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if’t had been of ambergris;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

How did they rivet, with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their watry Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky.

Yet still his claim the injur’d ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog ore their steeples play’d:
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what’s their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coil;
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossest,
And sat not as a meat but as a guest;
And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw
Whole sholes of Dutch serv’d up for cabillau;
Or as they over the new level rang’d
For pickled herring, pickled heeren chang’d.
Nature, it seem’d, asham’d of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake.

Form: couplet
Don't Worry if Your Job Is Small
by Anonymous

Don't worry if your job is small,
And your rewards are few.
Remember that the mighty oak,
Was once a nut like you.

Form: ballad
So am I as the rich, whose blessed key (Sonnet 52)
by William Shakespeare

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest,
By new unfolding his imprison’d pride.
    Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
    Being had, to triumph, being lack’d, to hope.

Form: sonnet
On English Monsieur
by Ben Jonson

Would you believe, when you this monsieur see,
That his whole body should speak French, not he?
That so much scarf of France, and hat, and feather,
And shoe, and tie, and garter should come hether,
And land on one whose face durst never be
Toward the sea farther than Half-Way Tree?
That he, untraveled, should be French so much
As Frenchmen in his company should seem Dutch?
Or had his father, when he did him get,
The French disease, with which he labors yet?
Or hung some monsieur’s picture on the wall,
By which his dam conceived him, clothes and all?
Or is it some French statue? No: ’T doth move,
And stoop, and cringe. O then, it needs must prove
The new French tailor’s motion, monthly made,
Daily to turn in Paul’s, and help the trade.

Form: free verse
The Spring
by Thomas Carew

Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful Spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.
Now all things smile, only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

Form: pastoral
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Form: free verse
The Bear Hunt
by Abraham Lincoln

A wild-bear chace, didst never see?
   Then hast thou lived in vain.
Thy richest bump of glorious glee,
   Lies desert in thy brain.

When first my father settled here,
   ’Twas then the frontier line:
The panther’s scream, filled night with fear
   And bears preyed on the swine.

But woe for Bruin’s short lived fun,
   When rose the squealing cry;
Now man and horse, with dog and gun,
   For vengeance, at him fly.

A sound of danger strikes his ear;
   He gives the breeze a snuff;
Away he bounds, with little fear,
   And seeks the tangled rough.

On press his foes, and reach the ground,
   Where’s left his half munched meal;
The dogs, in circles, scent around,
   And find his fresh made trail.

With instant cry, away they dash,
   And men as fast pursue;
O’er logs they leap, through water splash,
   And shout the brisk halloo.

Now to elude the eager pack,
   Bear shuns the open ground;
Through matted vines, he shapes his track
   And runs it, round and round.

The tall fleet cur, with deep-mouthed voice,
   Now speeds him, as the wind;
While half-grown pup, and short-legged fice,
   Are yelping far behind.

And fresh recruits are dropping in
   To join the merry corps:
With yelp and yell,—a mingled din—
   The woods are in a roar.

And round, and round the chace now goes,
   The world’s alive with fun;
Nick Carter’s horse, his rider throws,
   And more, Hill drops his gun.

Now sorely pressed, bear glances back,
   And lolls his tired tongue;
When as, to force him from his track,
   An ambush on him sprung.

Across the glade he sweeps for flight,
   And fully is in view.
The dogs, new-fired, by the sight,
   Their cry, and speed, renew.

The foremost ones, now reach his rear,
   He turns, they dash away;
And circling now, the wrathful bear,
   They have him full at bay.

At top of speed, the horse-men come,
   All screaming in a row,
“Whoop! Take him Tiger. Seize him Drum.”
   Bang,—bang—the rifles go.

And furious now, the dogs he tears,
   And crushes in his ire,
Wheels right and left, and upward rears,
   With eyes of burning fire.

But leaden death is at his heart,
   Vain all the strength he plies.
And, spouting blood from every part,
   He reels, and sinks, and dies.

And now a dinsome clamor rose,
   ’Bout who should have his skin;
Who first draws blood, each hunter knows,
   This prize must always win.

But who did this, and how to trace
   What’s true from what’s a lie,
Like lawyers, in a murder case
   They stoutly argufy.

Aforesaid fice, of blustering mood,
   Behind, and quite forgot,
Just now emerging from the wood,
   Arrives upon the spot.

With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair—
   Brim full of spunk and wrath,
He growls, and seizes on dead bear,
   And shakes for life and death.

And swells as if his skin would tear,
   And growls and shakes again;
And swears, as plain as dog can swear,
   That he has won the skin.

Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee—
   Nor mind, that now a few
Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be,
   Conceited quite as you.

Form: ballad
Ode to the Sun
by Eloise Bibb Thompson

How many scenes, O sun,
Hast thou not shone upon!
How many tears, O light,
Have dropped before thy sight!
How many heart-felt sighs,
How many piercing cries,
How many deeds of woe,
Dost thy bright light not know!
How many broken hearts,
That are pierced by sorrow’s darts
How many maddened brains,
That are wild with passion’s rains;
How many soul-sick lives,
Stabbed with despair’s sharp knives,
Hast thou above the skies,
Not seen with thy radiant eyes!
Shine on, majestic one!
Shine on, O glorious sun!
And never fail to cheer
My life so dark and drear.
Whene’er thou shinest bright,
And show thy brilliant light,
The cares I know each day
Silently steal away.

Form: ode
Giving Back the Flower
by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

So, because you chose to follow me into the subtle sadness of night,
    And to stand in the half-set moon with the weird fall-light on your glimmering hair,
Till your presence hid all of the earth and all of the sky from my sight,
    And to give me a little scarlet bud, that was dying of frost, to wear,
 
Say, must you taunt me forever, forever? You looked at my hand and you knew
    That I was the slave of the Ring, while you were as free as the wind is free.
When I saw your corpse in your coffin, I flung back your flower to you;
    It was all of yours that I ever had; you may keep it, and—keep from me.
 
Ah? so God is your witness. Has God, then, no world to look after but ours?
    May He not have been searching for that wild star, with the trailing plumage, that
        flew
Far over a part of our darkness while we were there by the freezing flowers,
    Or else brightening some planet’s luminous rings, instead of thinking of you?
 
Or, if He was near us at all, do you think that He would sit listening there
    Because you sang “Hear me, Norma,” to a woman in jewels and lace,
While, so close to us, down in another street, in the wet, unlighted air,
    There were children crying for bread and fire, and mothers who questioned His
        grace?
 
Or perhaps He had gone to the ghastly field where the fight had been that day,
    To number the bloody stabs that were there, to look at and judge the dead;
Or else to the place full of fever and moans where the wretched wounded lay;
    At least I do not believe that He cares to remember a word that you said.
 
So take back your flowers, I tell you—of its sweetness I now have no need;
    Yes; take back your flower down into the stillness and mystery to keep;
When you wake I will take it, and God, then, perhaps will witness indeed,
    But go, now, and tell Death he must watch you, and not let you walk in your sleep.

Form: quatrain
The Mower
by Andrew Marvell

Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,
     Did after him the world seduce;
And from the fields the flow’rs and plants allure,
     Where nature was most plain and pure.
He first enclos’d within the garden’s square
     A dead and standing pool of air;
And a more luscious earth for them did knead,
     Which stupefied them while it fed.
The pink grew then as double as his mind;
     The nutriment did change the kind.
With strange perfumes he did the roses taint,
     And flow’rs themselves were taught to paint.
The tulip, white, did for complexion seek,
     And learn’d to interline its cheek;
Its onion root they then so high did hold,
     That one was for a meadow sold.
Another world was search’d, through oceans new,
     To find the Marvel of Peru.
And yet these rarities might be allow’d,
     To man, that sov’reign thing and proud;
Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,
     Forbidden mixtures there to see.
No plant now knew the stock from which it came,
     He grafts upon the wild the tame;
That the uncertain and adult’rate fruit
     Might put the palate in dispute.
His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,
     Lest any tyrant him out-do;
And in the cherry he does nature vex,
     To procreate without a sex.
’Tis all enforc’d, the fountain and the grot,
     While the sweet fields do lie forgot;
Where willing nature does to all dispense
     A wild and fragrant innocence;
And fauns and fairies do the meadows till,
     More by their presence than their skill.
Their statues polish’d by some ancient hand,
     May to adorn the gardens stand;
But howso’ere the figures do excel,
     The gods themselves with us do dwell.

Form: couplet
Ulysses
by Lord Tennyson Alfred

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

         This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

         There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Form: blank verse
When thou shalt be disposed to set me light (Sonnet, 88)
by William Shakespeare

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light
And place my merit in they of scorn,
Upon thy side against myself I’ll fight
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults conceal’d, wherein I am attainted,
That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:
And I by this will be a gainer too;
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
The injuries that to myself I do,
Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
    Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
    That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.

Form: sonnet
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic
by William Wordsworth

Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
And was the safeguard of the west: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reached its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is passed away.

Form: sonnet
A Triad
by Christina Rossetti

Three sang of love together: one with lips
   Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow,
Flushed to the yellow hair and finger tips;
   And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow
   Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show;
And one was blue with famine after love,
   Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.
One shamed herself in love; one temperately
   Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife;
One famished died for love. Thus two of three
   Took death for love and won him after strife;
One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee:
   All on the threshold, yet all short of life.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet 7: How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth
by John Milton

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
       Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
       My hasting days fly on with full career,
       But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
       That I to manhood am arriv'd so near;
       And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
       That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
       It shall be still in strictest measure ev'n
       To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n:
       All is, if I have grace to use it so
       As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.

Form: sonnet
Highland Mary
by Robert Burns

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around
         The castle o' Montgomery,
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers,
         Your waters never drumlie!
There Simmer first unfald her robes,
         And there the langest tarry:
For there I took the last Fareweel
         O' my sweet Highland Mary.

How sweetly bloom'd the gay, green birk,
         How rich the hawthorn's blossom;
As underneath their fragrant shade,
         I clasp'd her to my bosom!
The golden Hours, on angel wings,
         Flew o'er me and my Dearie;
For dear to me as light and life
         Was my sweet Highland Mary.

Wi' mony a vow, and lock'd embrace,
         Our parting was fu' tender;
And pledging aft to meet again,
         We tore oursels asunder:
But Oh! fell Death's untimely frost,
         That nipt my Flower sae early!
Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay,
         That wraps my Highland Mary!

O pale, pale now, those rosy lips,
         I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly!
And clos'd for ay the sparkling glance,
         That dwalt on me sae kindly!
And mouldering now in silent dust,
         That heart that lo'ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom's core
         Shall live my Highland Mary.

Form: ballad
The Bird-Choros of Ion
by Euripides

translated by H. D.

Birds from Parnassus,
swift
you dart
from the loftiest peaks;
you hover, dip,
you sway and perch
undaunted on the gold-set cornice;
you eagle,
god’s majestic legate,
who tear, who strike
song-birds in mid-flight,
my arrow whistles toward you,
swift
be off;

ah drift,
ah drift
so soft, so light,
your scarlet foot so deftly placed
to waft you neatly
to the pavement,
swan, swan
and do you really think
your song
that tunes the harp of Helios,
will save you
from the arrow-flight?
turn back,
back
to the lake of Delos;

lest all the song notes
pause and break
across a blood-stained throat
gone songless,
turn back,
back
ere it be too late,
to wave-swept Delos.

Alas, and still another,
what?
you’d place your mean nest
in the cornice?
sing, sing
my arrow-string,
tell to the thief
that plaits its house
for fledglings
in the god’s own house,
that still the Alpheus
whispers sweet
to lure
the birdlets to the place,
that still the Isthmus
shines with forests;
on the white statues
must be found
no straw nor litter
of bird-down,
Phœbos must have his portal fair;

and yet, O birds,
though this my labour
is set,
though this my task is clear,
though I must slay you,
I, god’s servant,
I who take here
my bread and life
and sweep the temple,
still I swear
that I would save you,
birds or spirits,
winged songs
that tell to men god’s will;

still, still
the Alpheus whispers clear
to lure the bird-folk
to its waters,
ah still
the Isthmus
blossoms fair;
lest all the song notes
pause and break
across a blood-stained throat
gone songless,
turn back,
back
ere it be too late,
to wave-swept Delos.

Form: dramatic monologue