PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
The Calm
by John Donne

Our storm is past, and that storm's tyrannous rage,
A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth 'suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady'as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now; and, as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,
Like courts removing, or like ended plays.
The fighting-place now seamen's rags supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.
Earth's hollownesses, which the world's lungs are,
Have no more wind than the upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes' jaws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboil'd wretches, on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encag'd, the shepherds' scoff,
Or like slack-sinew'd Samson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th' emperor's lov'd snake invade,
The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.
Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov'd and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push'd me first,
I lose my end; for here, as well as I,
A desperate may live, and a coward die.
Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies.
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay
A scourge, 'gainst which we all forget to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas,
Is man now, than before he was? He was
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

Form: couplet
Near Helikon
by Trumbull Stickney

By such an all-embalming summer day
As sweetens now among the mountain pines
Down to the cornland yonder and the vines,
To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray,
How do all things together take their way
Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines
And bread and light and whatsoe’er combines
In the large wreath to make it round and gay.
To me my troubled life doth now appear
Like scarce distinguishable summits hung
Around the blue horizon: places where
Not even a traveller purposeth to steer,—
Whereof a migrant bird in passing sung,
And the girl closed her window not to hear.

Form: sonnet
Those lines that I before have writ do lie (Sonnet 115)
by William Shakespeare

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgement knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time, whose millon’d accidents
Creep in ’twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas, why, fearing of time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say ‘Now I love you best,’
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
    Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
    To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

Form: sonnet
Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be]
by William Shakespeare

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Form: dramatic monologue
Little Elegy
by Elinor Wylie

Withouten you
No rose can grow;
No leaf be green
If never seen
Your sweetest face;
No bird have grace
Or power to sing;
Or anything
Be kind, or fair,
And you nowhere.

Form: couplet
You Smiled, You Spoke, and I Believed
by Walter Savage Landor

You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more;
Nor hope I what I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain;
Deceive, deceive me once again!

Form: couplet
Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge
by William Wordsworth

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned—
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only—this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet 16: Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest
by Alan Seeger

Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest,
With single rites the common debt to pay?
On some green headland fronting to the East
Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.
Naked, uplifting in a laden tray
New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,
Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray
To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.
The morning planet poised above the sea
Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid;
Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity
Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid,
That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes,
Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.

Form: sonnet
A Bird Song
by Christina Rossetti

It's a year almost that I have not seen her:
Oh, last summer green things were greener,
Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.

It's surely summer, for there's a swallow:
Come one swallow, his mate will follow,
The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.

Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow
O'er height, o'er hollow! I'd be a swallow,
To build this weather one nest together.

Form: ode
The House of Life: 73. The Choice, III
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die
     Outstretch'd in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
     Thou say'st: "Man's measur'd path is all gone o'er:
Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
Man clomb until he touch'd the truth; and I,
     Even I, am he whom it was destin'd for."
     How should this be? Art thou then so much more
Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

Nay, come up hither. From this wave-wash'd mound
     Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
     Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
     Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

Form: sonnet
Holy Sonnets: Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
by John Donne

Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
Dost woo my soul, for hers off'ring all thine,
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out.

Form: sonnet
Song: Fair Iris I love and hourly I die
by John Dryden

from Amphitryon

Fair Iris I love and hourly I die,
But not for a lip nor a languishing eye:
She's fickle and false, and there I agree;
For I am as false and as fickle as she:
We neither believe what either can say;
And, neither believing, we neither betray.

'Tis civil to swear and say things, of course;
We mean not the taking for better or worse.
When present we love, when absent agree;
I think not of Iris, nor Iris of me:
The legend of love no couple can find
So easy to part, or so equally join'd.

Form: couplet
The Worship of Nature
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The harp at Nature’s advent strung
      Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
      Has never died away.

And prayer is made, and praise is given,
      By all things near and far;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
      And mirrors every star.

Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
      As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
      The priesthood of the sea!

They pour their glittering treasures forth,
      Their gifts of pearl they bring,
And all the listening hills of earth
      Take up the song they sing.

The green earth sends its incense up
      From many a mountain shrine;
From folded leaf and dewy cup
      She pours her sacred wine.

The mists above the morning rills
      Rise white as wings of prayer;
The altar-curtains of the hills
      Are sunset’s purple air.

The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
      Or low with sobs of pain,—
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
      The dropping tears of rain.

With drooping head and branches crossed
      The twilight forest grieves,
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
      From all its sunlit leaves.

The blue sky is the temple’s arch,
      Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
      The chorus of a prayer.

So Nature keeps the reverent frame
      With which her years began,
And all her signs and voices shame
      The prayerless heart of man.

Form: common measure
Sonnet 9: On Returning to the Front after Leave
by Alan Seeger

Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed),
Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue
Look the leftovers of mankind that rest,
Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you.
War has its horrors, but has this of good—
That its sure processes sort out and bind
Brave hearts in one intrepid brotherhood
And leave the shams and imbeciles behind.
Now turn we joyful to the great attacks,
Not only that we face in a fair field
Our valiant foe and all his deadly tools,
But also that we turn disdainful backs
On that poor world we scorn yet die to shield—
That world of cowards, hypocrites, and fools.

Form: sonnet
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed (Sonnet 27)
by William Shakespeare

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
    Lo! Thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
    For thee and for myself no quiet find.

Form: sonnet
Street Music
by Elizabeth Akers Allen

Methought a sweet sound from the street uprose,—   
   And as I pause, and strive again to hear,
‘St Patrick’s Day’ draws softly to its close,
   And ‘Jordan’s’ waves flow sweetly to my ear,
What though from humble source the chorus floats?
   Music is music, and I listen still;
I have ‘an ear’, — ay, two! — Even jews-harp notes
   Pass current with me, hear them where I will,
A slight Italian boy, with jetty hair
   Shading dark eyes, grinds out the melody,
Pulverized music! — In his garb and air
   I read of sunnier lands beyond the sea,
And, dreaming, wander to a fairer clime,
Recalled, too suddenly, by — ‘If you please, a dime!’

Form: sonnet
A Dialogue between Thyrsis and Dorinda
by Andrew Marvell

DORINDA
When death shall part us from these kids,
And shut up our divided lids,
Tell me, Thyrsis, prithee do,
Whither thou and I must go.

THYRSIS
To the Elysium.

DORINDA
                        Oh, where is’t?

THYRSIS
A chaste soul can never miss’t.

DORINDA
I know no way but to our home,
Is our cell Elysium?

THYRSIS
Turn thine eye to yonder sky,
There the milky way doth lie;
’Tis a sure but rugged way,
That leads to everlasting day.

DORINDA
There birds may nest, but how can I
That have no wings and cannot fly?

THYRSIS
Do not sigh, fair nymph, for fire
Hath no wings yet doth aspire
Till it hit against the Pole:
Heaven’s the centre of the soul.

DORINDA
But in Elysium how do they
Pass eternity away?

THYRSIS
Oh, there’s neither hope nor fear,
There’s no wolf, no fox, no bear.
No need of dog to fetch our stray,
Our Lightfoot we may give away;
No oat-pipe’s needful; there thy ears
May sleep with music of the spheres.

DORINDA
Oh sweet! Oh sweet! How I my future state
By silent thinking antedate:
I prithee let us spend our time to come
In talking of Elysium.

THYRSIS
Then I’ll go on. There sheep are full
Of sweetest grass and softest wool;
There birds sing consorts, garlands grow,
Cool winds do whisper, springs do flow.
There always is a rising sun,
And day is ever but begun.
Shepherds there bear equal sway,
And every nymph’s a Queen of May.

DORINDA
Ah me, ah me!

THYRSIS
                        Dorinda, why dost cry?

DORINDA
I’m sick, I’m sick, and fain would die.
Convince me now that this is true
By bidding with me all adieu.

THYRSIS
I cannot live without thee, I,
I’ll for thee, much more with thee, die.

CHORUS
Then let us give Corillo charge o’ the sheep,
And thou and I’ll pick poppies, and them steep
In wine, and drink on’t even till we weep,
So shall we smoothly pass away in sleep.

Form: couplet
Psalm 150
by Mary Sidney Herbert Countess of Pembroke

Oh, laud the Lord, the God of hosts commend,
        Exalt his pow’r, advance his holiness:
        With all your might lift his almightiness;
 Your greatest praise upon his greatness spend.
  
 Make trumpet’s noise in shrillest notes ascend;
        Make lute and lyre his loved fame express;
        Him let the pipe, him let the tabret bless,
 Him organ’s breath, that winds or waters lend.
  
 Let ringing timbrels so his honor sound,
        Let sounding cymbals so his glory ring,
        That in their tunes such melody be found
 As fits the pomp of most triumphant king.
  
 Conclude: by all that air or life enfold,
        Let high Jehovah highly be extolled.

Form: sonnet
Holy Sonnets: If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
by John Donne

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damn'd, alas, why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And mercy being easy, and glorious
To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee,
O God? Oh, of thine only worthy blood
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sins' black memory.
That thou remember them, some claim as debt;
I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

Form: sonnet
Exile
by Marjorie Pickthall

I chose the place where I would rest
When death should come to claim me,
With the red-rose roots to wrap my breast
And a quiet stone to name me.

But I am laid on a northern steep
With the roaring tides below me,
And only the frosts to bind my sleep,
And only the winds to know me.

Form: common measure
Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II [Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world]
by William Shakespeare

Cassius speaks to Brutus

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
“Brutus” and “Caesar”—what should be in that “Caesar”?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,
“Brutus” will start a spirit as soon as “Caesar.”
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walks encompassed but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough
When there is in it but only one man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say
There was a Brutus once that would have brooked
Th’ eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

Form: dramatic monologue
A Crowded Trolley Car
by Elinor Wylie

The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray
Sharp as golden sands,
A bell is clanging, people sway
Hanging by their hands.

Supple hands, or gnarled and stiff,
Snatch and catch and grope;
That face is yellow-pale, as if
The fellow swung from rope.

Dull like pebbles, sharp like knives,
Glances strike and glare,
Fingers tangle, Bluebeard’s wives
Dangle by the hair.

Orchard of the strangest fruits
Hanging from the skies;
Brothers, yet insensate brutes
Who fear each others’ eyes.

One man stands as free men stand
As if his soul might be
Brave, unbroken; see his hand
Nailed to an oaken tree.

Form: common measure
I Looked Up from My Writing
by Thomas Hardy

I looked up from my writing,
   And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
   The moon's full gaze on me.
Her meditative misty head
   Was spectral in its air,
And I involuntarily said,
   'What are you doing there?'
'Oh, I've been scanning pond and hole
   And waterway hereabout
For the body of one with a sunken soul
   Who has put his life-light out.
'Did you hear his frenzied tattle?
   It was sorrow for his son
Who is slain in brutish battle,
   Though he has injured none.
'And now I am curious to look
   Into the blinkered mind
Of one who wants to write a book
   In a world of such a kind.'
Her temper overwrought me,
   And I edged to shun her view,
For I felt assured she thought me
   One who should drown him too.

Form: quatrain
Ulysses [excerpt]
by James Joyce

Molly Bloom's closing soliloquy

...and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Form: dramatic monologue
Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
by William Shakespeare

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Form: sonnet
London’s Summer Morning
by Mary Robinson

Who has not waked to list the busy sounds
Of summer’s morning, in the sultry smoke
Of noisy London? On the pavement hot
The sooty chimney-boy, with dingy face
And tattered covering, shrilly bawls his trade,
Rousing the sleepy housemaid. At the door
The milk-pail rattles, and the tinkling bell
Proclaims the dustman’s office; while the street
Is lost in clouds impervious. Now begins
The din of hackney-coaches, waggons, carts;
While tinmen’s shops, and noisy trunk-makers,
Knife-grinders, coopers, squeaking cork-cutters,
Fruit-barrows, and the hunger-giving cries
Of vegetable-vendors, fill the air.
Now every shop displays its varied trade,
And the fresh-sprinkled pavement cools the feet
Of early walkers. At the private door
The ruddy housemaid twirls the busy mop,
Annoying the smart ’prentice, or neat girl,
Tripping with band-box lightly. Now the sun
Darts burning splendor on the glittering pane,
Save where the canvas awning throws a shade
On the gay merchandise. Now, spruce and trim,
In shops (where beauty smiles with industry)
Sits the smart damsel; while the passenger
Peeps through the window, watching every charm.
Now pastry dainties catch the eye minute
Of humming insects, while the limy snare
Waits to enthrall them. Now the lamp-lighter
Mounts the tall ladder, nimbly venturous,
To trim the half-filled lamps, while at his feet
The pot-boy yells discordant! All along
The sultry pavement, the old-clothes-man cries
In tone monotonous, while sidelong views
The area for his traffic: now the bag
Is slyly opened, and the half-worn suit
(Sometimes the pilfered treasure of the base
Domestic spoiler), for one half its worth,
Sinks in the green abyss. The porter now
Bears his huge load along the burning way;
And the poor poet wakes from busy dreams,
To paint the summer morning.

Form: blank verse
At the round earth's imagined corners (Holy Sonnet 7)
by John Donne

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet 139: O, call not me to justify the wrong
by William Shakespeare

O, call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;
Use power with power, and slay me not by art.
Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside;
What need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o’erpressed defense can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah, my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries—
    Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
    Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.

Form: sonnet