PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
Love among the Ruins
by Robert Browning

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
     Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
     Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
     As they crop—
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
     (So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
     Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
     Peace or war.

Now the country does not even boast a tree,
     As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
     From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
     Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
     Up like fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
     Bounding all
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest
     Twelve abreast.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
     Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'er-spreads
     And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
     Stock or stone—
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
     Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
     Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
     Bought and sold.

Now—the single little turret that remains
     On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
     Overscored,
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
     Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
     Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
     As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
     Viewed the games.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
     Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
     In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
     Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
     Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
     For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
       Till I come.

But he looked upon the city, every side,
     Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
     Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then
     All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
     Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
     Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
     Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
     South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
     As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
     Gold, of course.
O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
     Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
     Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
     Love is best.

Form: couplet
The Snow-Storm
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

Form: blank verse
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: [Prelude]
by Lord Tennyson Alfred

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
         Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
         By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
         Thou madest Life in man and brute;
         Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
         Thou madest man, he knows not why,
         He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,
         The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
         Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
         They have their day and cease to be:
         They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
         For knowledge is of things we see;
         And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
         But more of reverence in us dwell;
         That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;
         We mock thee when we do not fear:
         But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me,
         What seem'd my worth since I began;
         For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
         Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
         I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
         Confusions of a wasted youth;
         Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.

Form: elegy
Your love and pity doth the impression fill (Sonnet 112)
by William Shakespeare

Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
    You are so strongly in my purpose bred
    That all the world besides methinks are dead.

Form: sonnet
To Homer
by John Keats

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
   Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
   To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind;—but then the veil was rent,
   For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
   And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
   And precipices show untrodden green,
There is a budding morrow in midnight,
   There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet VI
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Form: sonnet
The Castaway
by William Cowper

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
         Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
         Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
         Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
         With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,
         Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
         Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.

He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
         To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
         That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
         And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
         Delay'd not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
         Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
         Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
         In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
         His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cried—Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,
         His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
         Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
         Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
         Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
         Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
         A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
   Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
         No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
         We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

Form: elegy
Mary's Girlhood (for a Picture)
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
     God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
     Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
Profound simplicity of intellect,
     And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
     Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.

So held she through her girlhood; as it were
     An angel-water'd lily, that near God
          Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home,
She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
     At all,—yet wept till sunshine, and felt aw'd:
          Because the fulness of the time was come.

Form: sonnet
Retrospect
by Rupert Brooke

In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
Love, in you, went passing by,
Penetrative, remote, and rare,
Like a bird in the wide air,
And, as the bird, it left no trace
In the heaven of your face.
In your stupidity I found
The sweet hush after a sweet sound.
All about you was the light
That dims the greying end of night;
Desire was the unrisen sun,
Joy the day not yet begun,
With tree whispering to tree,
Without wind, quietly.
Wisdom slept within your hair,
And Long-Suffering was there,
And, in the flowing of your dress,
Undiscerning Tenderness.
And when you thought, it seemed to me,
Infinitely, and like a sea,
About the slight world you had known
Your vast unsconsciousness was thrown . . . 
    O haven without wave or tide!
Silence, in which all songs have died!
Holy book, where hearts are still!
And home at length under the hill!
O mother quiet, breasts of peace,
Where love itself would faint and cease!
O infinite deep I never knew,
I would come back, come back to you,
Find you, as a pool unstirred,
Kneel down by you, and never a word,
Lay my head, and nothing said,
In your hands, ungarlanded;
And a long watch you would keep;
And I should sleep, and I should sleep!

Form: couplet
Yourself
by Jones Very

’Tis to yourself I speak; you cannot know
Him whom I call in speaking such an one,
For thou beneath the earth lie buried low,
Which he alone as living walks upon;
Thou mayst at times have heard him speak to you,
And often wished perchance that you were he;
And I must ever wish that it were true,
For then thou couldst hold fellowship with me;
But now thou hear’st us talk as strangers, met
Above the room wherein thou liest abed;
A word perhaps loud spoken thou mayst get,
Or hear our feet when heavily they tread;
But he who speaks, or him who’s spoken to,
Must both remain as strangers still to you.

Form: sonnet
Japanese Hokku
by Lewis Grandison Alexander

I.
Life goes by moving,
Up and down a chain of moods
Wanting what’s nothing.

II.
My soul is the wind
Dashing down fields of Autumn:
O, too swift to sing.

III.
Listen to the rain
Falling broken on the ground:
Pity the sky once.

IV.
Knowing not at all
Who stands above me seeing:
Tears of gratitude.

V
The nightingale sings
My heart desires but the night
Space swallows my voice:

VI.
I shall spend my moods
Like a rose discards leaves
And die without moods.

VII.
Did you say a sound?
Did you say the wind? Dashing
Only my soul’s quick—

VIII.
O moon of to-night
Let me rest my head on you
And hear my life sing.

IX.
My ears burn for speech
And you lie cold and silent
Supinely cruel:

X.
Look at the white moon
The sphinx does not question more.
Turn away your eyes.

XI.
Thought that is no thought
Poems buried in my heart
Song that is no song …

XII
The poetry of life?
No, the picture of my dreams
Flashing on my heart.

XIII
I ride down the stream
Between the earth and the sun
On the moon’s shadow.

XIV
Treading wearily
A unit of the parade
There is no escape.

XV.
Within the shadow
I am weaving the pattern
Of a spider web.

XVI
My heart like a shell
Moans at the breast of the earth
Being too full to sing.

XVII
You are life’s fountain
Springing from eternity
Flow not recklessly.

XVIII
I will wrap the song
In the leaves of the lotus
And send it to you.

XIX
No words speak louder
Than the tragic look of eyes
Close yours out of love.

XX
Why should I wander
I who have known no surprise?
Every day the same.

Form: haiku
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain (Sonnet 122)
by William Shakespeare

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character’d with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dead love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
    To keep an adjunct to remember thee
    Were to import forgetfulness in me.

Form: sonnet
Modern Love: XXXII
by George Meredith

Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift
To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie
With her fair visage an inverted sky
Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift,
Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth
(Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address
The inner me that thirsts for her no less,
And has so long been languishing in drouth,
I feel that I am matched; that I am man!
One restless corner of my heart of head,
That holds a dying something never dead,
Still frets, though Nature giveth all she can.
It means, that woman is not, I opine,
Her sex’s antidote. Who seeks the asp
For serpent’s biters? ’T would calm me could I clasp
Shrieking Bacchantes with their souls of wine!

Form: sonnet
Caprice
by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Who thankless flees me, I with love pursue,
Who loving follows me, I thankless flee;
To him who spurns my love I bend the knee,
His love who seeks me, cold I bid him rue;
I find as diamond him I yearning woo,
Myself a diamond when he yearns for me;
Who slays my love I would victorious see,
While slaying him who wills me blisses true.
To favor this one is to lose desire,
To crave that one, my virgin pride to tame;
On either hand I face a prospect dire,
Whatever path I tread, the goal the same:
To be adored by him of whom I tire,
Or else by him who scorns me brought to shame.

 

 

Al que ingrato me dexa, busco amante;
    al que amante me sigue, dexo ingrata;
    constante adoro, á quien mi amor maltrata;
    maltrato, á quien mi amor busca constante.
Al que trato de amor, hallo diamante,
    y soy diamante, al que de amor me trata;
    triunfante quiero vèr al que me matá,
    y mato á quien me quiere vèr triunfante.
Si á éste pago, padece mi deseo;
    si ruego a aquel, mi pundonor enojo:
    de entrambos modos infeliz me veo.
Pero yo, por mejor partido escojo
    de quien no quiero, ser violento empleo,
    que, de quien no me quiere, vil despojo.

Form: sonnet
Surgeons must be very careful (156)
by Emily Dickinson

Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit - Life!

Form: common measure
Fan-Piece for Her Imperial Lord
by Ezra Pound

O fan of white silk,
            clear as frost on the grass-blade,
You also are laid aside.

Form: ode
Othello, Act I, Scene I [O, sir, content you]
by William Shakespeare

Iago speaks to Roderigo

O, sir, content you;
I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow'd. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,
For nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are
Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,
It is as sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Form: dramatic monologue
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem (Sonnet 54)
by William Shakespeare

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hand on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
    And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
    When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

Form: sonnet
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war (Sonnet 46)
by William Shakespeare

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,—
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes—
But the defendant doth that plea deny
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To ’cide this title is impaneled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye’s moiety and the dear heart’s part:
    As thus; mine eye’s due is thy outward part,
    And my heart’s right thy inward love of heart.

Form: sonnet
A Thanksgiving to God, for his House
by Robert Herrick

Lord, Thou hast given me a cell
         Wherein to dwell,
A little house, whose humble roof
         Is weather-proof:
Under the spars of which I lie
         Both soft, and dry;
Where Thou my chamber for to ward
         Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
         Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch, as is my fate,
         Both void of state;
And yet the threshold of my door
         Is worn by th' poor,
Who thither come and freely get
         Good words, or meat.
Like as my parlour, so my hall
         And kitchen's small;
A little buttery, and therein
         A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
         Unchipp'd, unflead;
Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar
         Make me a fire,
Close by whose living coal I sit,
         And glow like it.
Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
         The pulse is Thine,
And all those other bits, that be
         There plac'd by Thee;
The worts, the purslain, and the mess
         Of water-cress,
Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent;
         And my content
Makes those, and my beloved beet,
         To be more sweet.
'Tis Thou that crown'st my glittering hearth
         With guiltless mirth;
And giv'st me wassail-bowls to drink,
         Spic'd to the brink.
Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand
         That soils my land;
And giv'st me, for my bushel sown,
         Twice ten for one;
Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay
         Her egg each day;
Besides my healthful ewes to bear
         Me twins each year;
The while the conduits of my kine
         Run cream, for wine.
All these, and better, Thou dost send
         Me, to this end,
That I should render, for my part,
         A thankful heart,
Which, fir'd with incense, I resign,
         As wholly Thine;
But the acceptance, that must be,
         My Christ, by Thee.

Form: couplet
She Was a Phantom of Delight
by William Wordsworth

She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

Form: couplet