PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck (Sonnet 14)
by William Shakespeare

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert:
    Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
    Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

Form: sonnet
The Man with the Hoe
by Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this —
More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed —
More filled with signs and portents for the soul —
More fraught with menace to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in the aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world.
A protest that is also a prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream,
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings —
With those who shaped him to the thing he is —
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world.
After the silence of the centuries?

Form: ekphrasis
Sonnet XLIV [For Thee the Sun Doth Daily Rise, and Set]
by George Santayana

For thee the sun doth daily rise, and set
Behind the curtain of the hills of sleep, 
And my soul, passing through the nether deep, 
Broods on thy love, and never can forget. 
For thee the garlands of the wood are wet, 
For thee the daisies up the meadow’s sweep
Stir in the sidelong light, and for thee weep
The drooping ferns above the violet. 
For thee the labour of my studious ease
I ply with hope, for thee all pleasures please, 
Thy sweetness doth the bread of sorrow leaven; 
And from thy noble lips and heart of gold
I drink the comfort of the faiths of old, 
Any thy perfection is my proof of heaven.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet 6
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Is he native to this realm? No,
his wide nature grew out of both worlds.
They more adeptly bend the willow's branches
who have experience of the willow's roots.

When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
on the table: it attracts the dead—
But may he, this quiet conjurer, may he
beneath the mildness of the eyelid

mix their bright traces into every seen thing;
and may the magic of earthsmoke and rue
be as real for him as the clearest connection.

Nothing can mar for him the authentic image;
whether he wanders through houses or graves,
let him praise signet ring, gold necklace, jar.

Form: sonnet
“And Change, with hurried hand, has swept these scenes”
by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

from Sonnets, Second Series

              XVIII

And Change, with hurried hand, has swept these scenes:
The woods have fallen; across the meadow-lot
The hunter’s trail and trap-path is forgot;
And fire has drunk the swamps of evergreens!
Yet for a moment let my fancy plant
These autumn hills again,—the wild dove’s haunt,
The wild deer’s walk. In golden umbrage shut,
The Indian river runs, Quonecktacut!
Here, but a lifetime back, where falls to-night
Behind the curtained pane a sheltered light
On buds of rose, or vase of violet
Aloft upon the marble mantel set,—
Here, in the forest-heart, hung blackening
The wolf-bait on the bush beside the spring.

Form: sonnet
Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran BLANC,
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

     Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my Thought,
Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing—there
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

     Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

     Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

     And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagg

Form: pastoral
The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad
by Robert Herrick

Dull to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all music now, since everything
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.
But if that golden age would come again
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd.
And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)
Knock at a star with my exalted head.

Form: couplet
Up-Hill
by Christina Rossetti

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
   Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
   From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
   A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
   You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
   Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
   They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
   Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
   Yea, beds for all who come.

Form: ballad
You Say, Columbus with his Argosies
by Trumbull Stickney

You say, Columbus with his argosies
Who rash and greedy took the screaming main
And vanished out before the hurricane
Into the sunset after merchandise,
Then under western palms with simple eyes
Trafficked and robbed and triumphed home again:
You say this is the glory of the brain
And human life no other use than this?
I then do answering say to you: The line
Of wizards and of saviours, keeping trust
In that which made them pensive and divine,
Passes before us like a cloud of dust.
What were they? Actors, ill and mad with wine,
And all their language babble and disgust.

Form: sonnet
Electrocution
by Lola Ridge

He shudders—feeling on the shaven spot
The probing wind, that stabs him to a thought
Of storm-drenched fields in a white foam of light,
And roads of his hill-town that leap to sight
Like threads of tortured silver. . .while the guards—
Monstrous deft dolls that move as on a string,
In wonted haste to finish with this thing,
Turn faces blanker than asphalted yards.

They heard the shriek that tore out of its sheath
But as a feeble moan. . .yet dared not breathe,
Who stared there at him, arching—like a tree
When the winds wrench it and the earth holds tight—
Whose soul, expanding in white agony,
Had fused in flaming circuit with the night.

Form: sonnet
In Heaven
by Stephen Crane

XVIII

In Heaven,
Some little blades of grass
Stood before God.
“What did you do?”
Then all save one of the little blades
Began eagerly to relate
The merits of their lives.
This one stayed a small way behind
Ashamed.
Presently God said:
“And what did you do?”
The little blade answered: “Oh, my lord,
“Memory is bitter to me
“For if I did good deeds
“I know not of them.”
Then God in all His splendor
Arose from His throne.
“Oh, best little blade of grass,” He said.

Form: free verse
So oft I invoke thee for my Muse (Sonnet 78)
by William Shakespeare

So oft I invoke thee for my Muse
And found such fair assistance in my verse
As every alien pen hath got my use
And under thee their posey disperse.
Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly
Have added feathers to the learned’s wing
And given grace a double majesty.
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
Whose influence is thine and born of thee:
In others’ works thou dost but mend the style,
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
    But thou art all my art and dost advance
    As high as learning my rude ignorance.

Form: sonnet
I Travelled among Unknown Men
by William Wordsworth

I travelled among unknown men,
     In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
     What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
     Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
     To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
     The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
     Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
     The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
     That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

Form: common measure
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye (Sonnet 62)
by William Shakespeare

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
    ’Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
    Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Form: sonnet
The Sonnet
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Alone it stands in Poesy’s fair land,
   A temple by the muses set apart;
   A perfect structure of consummate art,
By artists builded and by genius planned.
Beyond the reach of the apprentice hand,
   Beyond the ken of the unturtored heart,
   Like a fine carving in a common mart,
Only the favored few will understand.
A chef-d’oeuvre toiled over with great care,
   Yet which the unseeing careless crowd goes by,
A plainly set, but well-cut solitaire,
An ancient bit of pottery, too rare
   To please or hold aught save the special eye,
These only with the sonnet can compare.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet 7 [The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings]
by Henry Howard

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
And turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs;
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new repairèd scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swalllow pursueth the flies small;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

Form: sonnet
Is it thy will thy image should keep open (Sonnet 61)
by William Shakespeare

Is it thy will thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumber should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenour of thy jealous?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake;
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
    For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
    From my far off, which others all too near.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet: I Scarcely Grieve
by Henry Timrod

I scarcely grieve, O Nature! at the lot
That pent my life within a city’s bounds,
And shut me from thy sweetest sights and sounds.
Perhaps I had not learned, if some lone cot
Had nursed a dreamy childhood, what the mart
Taught me amid its turmoil; so my youth
Had missed full many a stern but wholesome truth.
Here, too, O Nature! in this haunt of Art,
Thy power is on me, and I own thy thrall.
There is no unimpressive spot on earth!
The beauty of the stars is over all,
And Day and Darkness visit every hearth.
Clouds do not scorn us: yonder factory’s smoke
Looked like a golden mist when morning broke.

Form: sonnet
The Debt
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!

Form: couplet
The Ballad of Sally in our Alley
by Henry Carey

The ARGUMENT.

A Vulgar Error having long prevailed among many Persons, who imagine Sally Salisbury the Subject of this Ballad, the Author begs leave to undeceive and assure them it has not the least allusion to her, he being a stranger to her very Name at the time this Song was composed. For as Innocence and Virtue were ever the Boundaries of his Muse, so in this little Poem he had no other view than to set forth the Beauty of a chaste and disinterested Passion, even in the lowest Class of human Life. The real Occasion was this: A Shoemaker’s ’Prentice making Holiday with his Sweet-heart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the Puppet-shews, the Flying-chairs, and all the Elegancies of the Moorfields: From whence proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a Collation of Buns, Cheesecakes, Gammon of Bacon, Stuff’d-beef, and Bottled-ale; through all which Scenes the Author dodged them (charm’d with the Simplicity of their Courtship), from whence he drew this little Sketch of Nature; but being then young and obscure, he was very much ridicul’d by some of his Acquaintance for this Performance; which nevertheless made its way into the polite World, and amply recompenced him by the Applause of the divine Addison, who was pleased (more than once) to mention it with Approbation.

Of all the Girls that are so smart
    There’s none like pretty SALLY,
She is the Darling of my Heart,
    And she lives in our Alley.
There is no Lady in the Land
    Is half so sweet as SALLY,
She is the Darling of my Heart,
    And she lives in our Alley.

Her Father he makes Cabbage-nets,
    And through the Streets does cry ’em;
Her Mother she sells Laces long,
    To such as please to buy ’em:
But sure such Folks could ne’er beget
    So sweet a Girl as SALLY!
She is the Darling of my Heart,
    And she lives in our Alley.

When she is by I leave my Work,
    (I love her so sincerely)
My Master comes like any Turk,
    And bangs me most severely;
But, let him bang his Belly full,
    I’ll bear it all for SALLY;
She is the Darling of my Heart,
    And she lives in our Alley.

Of all the Days that’s in the Week,
    I dearly love but one Day,
And that’s the Day that comes betwixt
    A Saturday and Monday;
For then I’m drest, all in my best,
    To walk abroad with SALLY;
She is the Darling of my Heart,
    And she lives in our Alley.

My Master carries me to Church,
    And often am I blamed,
Because I leave him in the lurch,
    As soon as Text is named:
I leave the Church in Sermon time,
    And slink away to SALLY;
She is the Darling of my Heart,
    And she lives in our Alley.

When Christmas comes about again,
    O then I shall have Money;
I’ll hoard it up, and Box and all
    I’ll give it to my Honey:
And, would it were ten thousand Pounds;
    I’d give it all to SALLY;
She is the Darling of my Heart,
    And she lives in our Alley.

My Master and the Neighbours all,
    Make game of me and SALLY;
And (but for her) I’d better be
    A Slave and row a Galley:
But when my seven long Years are out,
    O then I’ll marry SALLY!
O then we’ll wed and then we’ll bed,
    But not in our Alley.

Form: ballad
Gitanjali 22
by Rabindranath Tagore

In the deep shadows of the rainy July, with secret steps, thou walkest, silent as night, eluding all watchers.

To-day the morning has closed its eyes, heedless of the insistent calls of the loud east wind, and a thick veil has been drawn over the ever-wakeful blue sky.

The woodlands have hushed their songs, and doors are all shut at every house. Thou art the solitary wayfarer in this deserted street. Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house—do not pass by like a dream.

Form: prose poem
How careful was I, when I took my way (Sonnet 48)
by William Shakespeare

How careful was I, when I took my way,
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
That to my use it might unused stay
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,
Thou, best of dearest and mine only care,
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
Thee have I not lock’d up in any chest,
Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
Within the gentle closure of my breast,
From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;
    And even thence thou wilt be stol’n, I fear,
    For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

Form: sonnet
Grief
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless—
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air,
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blenching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death;
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath!
Touch it! the marble eyelids are not wet—
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Form: sonnet
Tam Glen
by Robert Burns

My heart is a-breaking, dear Tittie,
         Some counsel unto me come len';
To anger them a' is a pity,
         But what will I do wi' Tam Glen?

I'm thinking, wi' sic a braw fellow,
         In poortith I might mak a fen':
What care I in riches to wallow,
         If I mauna marry Tam Glen?

There's Lowrie, the laird o' Dumeller,
         "Guid-day to you,"—brute! he comes ben:
He brags and he blaws o' his siller,
         But when will he dance like Tam Glen?

My minnie does constantly deave me,
         And bids me beware o' young men;
They flatter, she says, to deceive me;
         But wha can think sae o' Tam Glen?

My daddie says, gin I'll forsake him,
         He'll gie me guid hunder marks ten:
But, if it's ordain'd I maun take him,
         O wha will I get but Tam Glen?

Yestreen at the valentines' dealing,
         My heart to my mou gied a sten:
For thrice I drew ane without failing,
         And thrice it was written, "Tam Glen"!

The last Halloween I was waukin
         My droukit sark-sleeve, as ye ken:
His likeness cam up the house staukin,
         And the very gray breeks o' Tam Glen!

Come counsel, dear Tittie, don't tarry;
         I'll gie ye my bonie black hen,
Gif ye will advise me to marry
         The lad I lo'e dearly, Tam Glen.

Form: ballad
A Barefoot Boy
by James Whitcomb Riley

A barefoot boy! I mark him at his play—
For May is here once more, and so is he,—
His dusty trousers, rolled half to the knee,
And his bare ankles grimy, too, as they:
Cross-hatchings of the nettle, in array
Of feverish stripes, hint vividly to me
Of woody pathways winding endlessly
Along the creek, where even yesterday
He plunged his shrinking body—gasped and shook—
Yet called the water "warm," with never lack
Of joy. And so, half enviously I look
Upon this graceless barefoot and his track,—
His toe stubbed—ay, his big toe-nail knocked back
Like unto the clasp of an old pocketbook.

Form: sonnet
Let me confess that we two must be twain. (Sonnet 36)
by William Shakespeare

Let me confess that we two must be twain.
Although our undivided loves are one:
So shall those blots that do with me remain
Without thy help by me be borne alone.
In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which though it alter not love’s sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight.
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
Not thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
    But do not so; I love thee in such sort
    As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

Form: sonnet
A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns

O my Luve is like a red, red rose
   That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
   That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
   So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
   While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
   And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
   Though it were ten thousand mile.

Form: ballad
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow (Sonnet 2)
by William Shakespeare

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
    This were to be new made when thou are old,
    And see thy blood warm when thou feel’s it cold.

Form: sonnet