PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
Against that time, if ever that time come (Sonnet 49)
by William Shakespeare

Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Call’d to that audit by advised respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity,—
Against that time do I ensconce me here
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand against myself uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
    To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
    Since why to love I can allege no cause.

Form: sonnet
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
by Robert Herrick

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
 Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
 Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
 The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
 And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
 When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
 Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
 And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
 You may forever tarry.

Form: common measure
Astrophil and Stella 1: Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show
by Sir Philip Sidney

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

Form: sonnet
Worldly Place
by Matthew Arnold

Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen—
Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,
Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;
And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour here!
The aids to noble life are all within."

Form: sonnet
Men Say They Know Many Things
by Henry David Thoreau

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, —
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.

Form: couplet
To -
by Sarah Helen Whitman

Vainly my heart had with thy sorceries striven:
It had no refuge from thy love,—no Heaven
But in thy fatal presence;—from afar
It owned thy power and trembled like a star
O’erfraught with light and splendor. Could I deem
How dark a shadow should obscure its beam?—
Could I believe that pain could ever dwell
Where thy bright presence cast its blissful spell?
Thou wert my proud palladium;—could I fear
The avenging Destinies when thou wert near?—
Thou wert my Destiny;—thy song, thy fame,
The wild enchantments clustering round thy name,
Were my soul’s heritage, its royal dower;
Its glory and its kingdom and its power!

Form: sonnet
Modern Love: XI
by George Meredith

Out in the yellow meadows, where the bee
Hums by us with the honey of the Spring,
And showers of sweet notes from the larks on wing,
Are dropping like a noon-dew, wander we.
Or is it now? or was it then? for now,
As then, the larks from running rings pour showers:
The golden foot of May is on the flowers,
And friendly shadows dance upon her brow.
What’s this, when Nature swears there is no change
To challenge eyesight? Now, as then, the grace
Of heaven seems holding earth in its embrace.
Nor eyes, nor heart, has she to feel it strange?
Look, woman, in the West. There wilt thou see
An amber cradle near the sun’s decline:
Within it, featured even in death divine,
Is lying a dead infant, slain by thee.

Form: sonnet
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
by Robert Browning

Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!
   Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
   God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
   Oh, that rose has prior claims--
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
   Hell dry you up with its flames!

At the meal we sit together;
   Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
   Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely
   Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt;
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
What's the Greek name for "swine's snout"?

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
   Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
   And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
   Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--
Marked with L. for our initial!
   (He-he! There his lily snaps!)

Saint, forsooth! While Brown Dolores
   Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
   Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
   --Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
   (That is, if he'd let it show!)

When he finishes refection,
   Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
   As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
   Drinking watered orange pulp--
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
   While he drains his at one gulp!

Oh, those melons! if he's able
   We're to have a feast; so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
   All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
   Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble,
   Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians,
   Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine district damnations,
   One sure, if another fails;
If I trip him just a-dying,
   Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
   Off to hell, a Manichee?

Or, my scrofulous French novel
   On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
   Hand and foot in Belial's gripe;
If I double down its pages
   At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
   Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

Or, there's Satan!--one might venture
   Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
   As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
   We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine...
'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia
   Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r--you swine!

Form: dramatic monologue
To Ben Jonson
by Thomas Carew

Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand
Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand
To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due;
It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true
Thy comic muse, from the exalted line
Touch'd by thy Alchemist, doth since decline
From that her zenith, and foretells a red
And blushing evening, when she goes to bed;
Yet such as shall outshine the glimmering light
With which all stars shall gild the following night.
Nor think it much, since all thy eaglets may
Endure the sunny trial, if we say
This hath the stronger wing, or that doth shine
Trick'd up in fairer plumes, since all are thine.
Who hath his flock of cackling geese compar'd
With thy tun'd choir of swans? or else who dar'd
To call thy births deform'd? But if thou bind
By city-custom, or by gavelkind,
In equal shares thy love on all thy race,
We may distinguish of their sex, and place;
Though one hand form them, and though one brain strike
Souls into all, they are not all alike.
Why should the follies then of this dull age
Draw from thy pen such an immodest rage
As seems to blast thy else-immortal bays,
When thine own tongue proclaims thy itch of praise?
Such thirst will argue drouth. No, let be hurl'd
Upon thy works by the detracting world
What malice can suggest; let the rout say,
The running sands, that, ere thou make a play,
Count the slow minutes, might a Goodwin frame
To swallow, when th' hast done, thy shipwreck'd name;
Let them the dear expense of oil upbraid,
Suck'd by thy watchful lamp, that hath betray'd
To theft the blood of martyr'd authors, spilt
Into thy ink, whilst thou growest pale with guilt.
Repine not at the taper's thrifty waste,
That sleeks thy terser poems; nor is haste
Praise, but excuse; and if thou overcome
A knotty writer, bring the booty home;
Nor think it theft if the rich spoils so torn
From conquer'd authors be as trophies worn.
Let others glut on the extorted praise
Of vulgar breath, trust thou to after-days;
Thy labour'd works shall live when time devours
Th' abortive offspring of their hasty hours.
Thou are not of their rank, the quarrel lies
Within thine own verge; then let this suffice,
The wiser world doth greater thee confess
Than all men else, than thyself only less.

Form: couplet
The Unknown Dead
by Henry Timrod

The rain is plashing on my sill,
But all the winds of Heaven are still;
And so it falls with that dull sound
Which thrills us in the church-yard ground,
When the first spadeful drops like lead
Upon the coffin of the dead.
Beyond my streaming window-pane,
I cannot see the neighboring vane,
Yet from its old familiar tower
The bell comes, muffled, through the shower.
What strange and unsuspected link
Of feeling touched, has made me think—
While with a vacant soul and eye
I watch that gray and stony sky—
Of nameless graves on battle-plains
Washed by a single winter’s rains,
Where, some beneath Virginian hills,
And some by green Atlantic rills,
Some by the waters of the West,
A myriad unknown heroes rest.
Ah! not the chiefs who, dying, see
Their flags in front of victory,
Or, at their life-blood’s noble cost
Pay for a battle nobly lost,
Claim from their monumental beds
The bitterest tears a nation sheds.
Beneath yon lonely mound—the spot
By all save some fond few forgot—
Lie the true martyrs of the fight,
Which strikes for freedom and for right.
Of them, their patriot zeal and pride,
The lofty faith that with them died,
No grateful page shall farther tell
Than that so many bravely fell;
And we can only dimly guess
What worlds of all this world’s distress,
What utter woe, despair, and dearth,
Their fate has brought to many a hearth.
Just such a sky as this should weep
Above them, always, where they sleep;
Yet, haply, at this very hour,
Their graves are like a lover’s bower;
And Nature’s self, with eyes unwet,
Oblivious of the crimson debt
To which she owes her April grace,
Laughs gaily o’er their burial place.

Form: couplet
Robin Hood
by John Keats

TO A FRIEND

No! those days are gone away
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

         No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amaz'd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

         On the fairest time of June
You may go, with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John, or Robin bold;
Never one, of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale
Messenger for spicy ale.

         Gone, the merry morris din;
Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe";
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her—strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!

         So it is: yet let us sing,
Honour to the old bow-string!
Honour to the bugle-horn!
Honour to the woods unshorn!
Honour to the Lincoln green!
Honour to the archer keen!
Honour to tight little John,
And the horse he rode upon!
Honour to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!
Honour to maid Marian,
And to all the Sherwood-clan!
Though their days have hurried by
Let us two a burden try.

Form: couplet
Tender Buttons [A Long Dress]
by Gertrude Stein

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.

What is the wind, what is it. 

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.

Form: prose poem
Skull Song
by Genevieve Taggard

The skin of the sea was thick, to-night,
And the tone of the sea was dull;
When I found by the edge of the sullen sea
The half of a sea-god’s skull.

Half of a sea-god’s skull was there,
Half of a sea-god’s tail.
When I dug them out of the clutch of the sand
The peering moon went pale.

The peering moon went pale, because
Her other eye had seen
The other half of the sea-god’s bones
Ten thousand fathom green . . .

Ten thousand fathom green with sea,
The sea-god’s other bones
Swayed in a dead sea-goddess’s arms
On a pile of sea-washed stones.

The skin of the sea was thick, to-night,
And the tone of the sea was dull,
While I buried away from the sinister sea
All the mortal part of a skull.

Form: ballad
The Indifferent Shepherdess to Colin
by Ann Yearsley

Colin, why this mistake?
 Why plead thy foolish love?
My heart shall sooner break
 Than I a minion prove;
Nor care I half a rush,
 No snare I spread for thee:
Go home, my friend, and blush
 For love and liberty.

Remembrance is my own —
 Dominion bright and clear,
Truth there was ever known
 To combat every care:
One image there impressed
 Through life shall ever be
Whilst my innocuous breast
 Owns love of liberty.

I ever taught thee how
 To prize the soul entire,
When on the mountain’s brow
 I turned my rural lyre:
Thou servile art and vain,
 Thy love unworthy me!
Away! nor hear my strain,
 Of love or liberty.

What arts need I display
 To woo a soul like thine?
Thou ne’re canst know the way
 My memory to confine;
For my eternal plan
 Is to be calm and free.
Estranged from tyrant man
 I’ll keep my liberty.

Yon woods their foliage wear,
 Be thou away or nigh;
The warblers of the year
 Instruct me not to sigh:
My tears ne’er roll the steep,
 Nor swell the restless sea,
Except for those who sleep
 Bereft of liberty.

Slave to commanding eyes!
 Those eyes thou wouldst commend
My judgment must despise —
 My pity is thy friend:
If eyes alone can move
 A swain so dull as thee,
They mean but to reprove
 Thy loss of liberty.

I stray o’er rocks and fields
 Where native beauties shine:
All fettered fancy yields
 Be, Colin, ever thine.
Complain no more! but rove —
 My cheek from crimson free,
Within my native grove
 I’ll guard my liberty.

Form: pastoral
Comin thro' the Rye
by Robert Burns

[First Setting]
Comin thro' the rye, poor body,
     Comin thro' the rye,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie
     Comin thro' the rye.

[CHORUS.]
          Oh Jenny 's a' weet poor body
               Jenny 's seldom dry,
          She draigl't a' her petticoatie
               Comin thro' the rye.

Gin a body meet a body
     Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body —
     Need a body cry.
          Oh Jenny 's a' weet, &c.

Gin a body meet a body
     Comin thro' the glen;
Gin a body kiss a body —
     Need the warld ken!
          Oh Jenny 's a' weet, &c.

[Second Setting]
Gin a body meet a body, comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body, need a body cry;
Ilka body has a body, ne'er a ane hae I;
But a' the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I.

Gin a body meet a body, comin frae the well,
Gin a body kiss a body, need a body tell;
Ilka body has a body, ne'er a ane hae I,
But a the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I.

Gin a body meet a body, comin frae the town,
Gin a body kiss a body, need a body gloom;
Ilka Jenny has her Jockey, ne'er a ane hae I,
But a' the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I.

Form: ballad
Aliens
by Amy Lowell

The chatter of little people   
Breaks on my purpose
Like the water-drops which slowly wear the rocks to powder.
And while I laugh
My spirit crumbles at their teasing touch.

Form: free verse
Sonnet 111: O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
by William Shakespeare

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

Form: sonnet
To Althea, from Prison
by Richard Lovelace

When Love with unconfinèd wings
 Hovers within my Gates,
And my divine Althea brings
 To whisper at the Grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
 And fettered to her eye,
The Gods that wanton in the Air,
 Know no such Liberty.

When flowing Cups run swiftly round
 With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with Roses bound,
 Our hearts with Loyal Flames;
When thirsty grief in Wine we steep,
 When Healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the Deep
 Know no such Liberty.

When (like committed linnets) I
 With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, Mercy, Majesty,
 And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
 He is, how Great should be,
Enlargèd Winds, that curl the Flood,
 Know no such Liberty.

Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
 Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
 That for an Hermitage.
If I have freedom in my Love,
 And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
 Enjoy such Liberty.

Form: common measure
from The Princess: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
by Lord Tennyson Alfred

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.

   Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

   Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

   Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

   Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Form: sonnet
Light Shining out of Darkness
by William Cowper

1
God moves in a mysterious way,
   His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
   And rides upon the storm.

2
Deep in unfathomable mines
   Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
   And works his sov'reign will.

3
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
   The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
   In blessings on your head.

4
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
   But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
   He hides a smiling face.

5
His purposes will ripen fast,
   Unfolding ev'ry hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
   But sweet will be the flow'r.

6
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
   And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
   And he will make it plain.

Form: common measure
It sifts from Leaden Sieves - (291)
by Emily Dickinson

It sifts from Leaden Sieves -
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road -

It makes an even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain -
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again -

It reaches to the Fence -
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces -
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack - and Stem -
A Summer’s empty Room -
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them -

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen -
Then stills it’s Artisans - like Ghosts -
Denying they have been -

Form: common measure
Sonnet II
by Alan Seeger

Not that I always struck the proper mean
Of what mankind must give for what they gain,
But, when I think of those whom dull routine
And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,
Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud
Race through blue heaven on its joyful course
Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,
I think I might have done a great deal worse;
For I have ever gone untied and free,
The stars and my high thoughts for company;
Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,
I have had the sense of space and amplitude,
And love in many places, silver-shoed,
Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet X [To one who has been long in city pent]
by John Keats

To one who has been long in city pent,
  ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
  And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with hearts content,
  Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
  Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
  Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,
  He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
  That falls through the clear ether silently.

Form: sonnet
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
by John Dryden

Farewell, too little and too lately known,
Whom I began to think and call my own;
For sure our souls were near ally'd; and thine
Cast in the same poetic mould with mine.
One common note on either lyre did strike,
And knaves and fools we both abhorr'd alike:
To the same goal did both our studies drive,
The last set out the soonest did arrive.
Thus Nisus fell upon the slippery place,
While his young friend perform'd and won the race.
O early ripe! to thy abundant store
What could advancing age have added more?
It might (what nature never gives the young)
Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.
But satire needs not those, and wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
A noble error, and but seldom made,
When poets are by too much force betray'd.
Thy generous fruits, though gather'd ere their prime
Still show'd a quickness; and maturing time
But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of rhyme.
Once more, hail and farewell; farewell thou young,
But ah too short, Marcellus of our tongue;
Thy brows with ivy, and with laurels bound;
But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around.

Form: elegy
The Lamb
by William Blake

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

Form: couplet