PoetryMTEB/EnglishPoetryFormClassification huggingface dataset:
The Step Mother
by Susanna Moodie

Well I recall my Father’s wife,
      The day he brought her home.
His children looked for years of strife,
      And troubles sure to come—
Ungraciously we welcomed her,
      A thing to scorn and blame;
And swore we never would confer
      On her, a Mother’s name

I see her yet—a girl in years,
      With eyes so blue and mild;
She greeted us with smiles and tears,
      How sweetly too she smiled—
She bent to kiss my sullen brow,
      With woman’s gentle grace;
And laid her tiny hand of snow
      On my averted face—

“Henry—is this your son? She said—
      “Dear boy—he now is mine—
What not one kiss?—” I shook my head,
      “I am no son of thine!—”
She sighed—and from her dimpled cheek
      The rosy colour fled;
She turned away and did not speak,
      My thoughts were with the dead—

There leaped from out my Father’s eyes
      A jet of swarthy fire;
That flashed on me in fierce surprise—
      I fled before his ire
I heard her gentle voice entreat—
      “Forgiveness for her sake”—
Which added swiftness to my feet,
      A sad and strange mistake—

A year had scarcely rolled away
      When by that hated bride;
I loved to linger half the day,
      In very joy and pride;
Her voice was music to mine ear,
      So soft its accent fell;
“Dear Mother now”—and oh, how dear
      No words of mine can tell—

She was so gentle, fair and kind,
      So pure in soul and free from art;
That woman with her noble mind,
      Subdued my rebel heart—
I just had learned to know her worth,
      My Father’s second choice to bless;
When God removed her from the earth,
      And plunged us all in deep distress—

Hot fever smote with burning blight
      Stretchd on a restless bed of pain;
I moaning lay from morn till night
      With aching limbs and throbbing brain—
Four weary weeks beside my bed,
      She sat within a darkened room;
Untiring held my aching head,
      Nor heeded silence—cold and gloom—

And when my courage quite gave way,
      And fainter grew my struggling breath;
She taught my stricken soul to pray
      And calmly meet approaching death—
“Fear not God’s angel, sent by Him,
      The weary spirit to release;
Before the mortal eyes grow dim,
      Floats down the white winged dove of peace”—

There came a change—but fingers small,
      No longer smoothed my matted hair;
She sprang not to my feeble call,
      Nor helped to lift me to my chair—
And I arose as from the dead,
      A life for her dear life was given;
The angel who had watched my bed
      Had vanished into Heaven!—

Form: ballad
Protus
by Robert Browning

Among these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,—
One loves a baby face, with violets there,
Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
As those were all the little locks could bear.

Now read here. "Protus ends a period
"Of empery beginning with a god;
"Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,
"Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:
"And if he quickened breath there, 't would like fire
"Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
"A fame that he was missing, spread afar:
"The world, from its four corners, rose in war,
"Till he was borne out on a balcony
"To pacify the world when it should see.
"The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
"Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
"And day by day more beautiful he grew
"In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
"While young Greek sculptors gazing on the child
"Became, with old Greek sculpture, reconciled.
"Already sages laboured to condense
"In easy tomes a life's experience:
"And artists took grave counsel to impart
"In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art-
"To make his graces prompt as blossoming
"Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:
"Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,
"For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,
"And mortals love the letters of his name."

-Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.
New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say
How that same year, on such a month and day,
"John the Pannonian, groundedly believed
"A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
"The Empire from its fate the year before,-
"Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
"The same for six years, (during which the Huns
"Kept off their fingers from us) till his sons
"Put something in his liquor "-and so forth.
Then a new reign. Stay-"Take at its just worth "
(Subjoins an annotator) "what I give
"As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live
"And slip away. 'T is said, he reached man's age
"At some blind northern court; made, first a page,
"Then tutor to the children; last, of use
"About the hunting stables. I deduce
"He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,'
"Whereof the name in sundry catalogues
"Is extant yet. A Protus of the race
"Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,-
"And, if the same, he reached senility."

Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye,
Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can
To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!

Form: couplet
[even with insects]
by Kobayashi Issa

Even with insects—
some can sing,
    some can’t.

Form: haiku
Ye Flowery Banks (Bonie Doon)
by Robert Burns

Ye flowery banks o' bonie Doon,
         How can ye blume sae fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
         And I sae fu' o' care?

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
         That sings upon the bough;
Thou minds me o' the happy days,
         When my fause love was true.

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
         That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
         And wist na o' my fate.

Aft hae I rov'd by bonie Doon
         To see the wood-bine twine,
And ilka bird sang o' its luve,
         And sae did I o' mine.

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose
         Frae aff its thorny tree;
And my fause luver staw my rose
         But left the thorn wi' me.

Form: ballad
January 22nd, Missolonghi
by Lord Byron (George Gordon)

On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
       Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
                                    Still let me love!

   My days are in the yellow leaf;
       The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm—the canker, and the grief
                                    Are mine alone!

   The fire that on my bosom preys
       Is lone as some Volcanic Isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze
                                    A funeral pile.

   The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
       The exalted portion of the pain
And power of Love I cannot share,
                                    But wear the chain.

   But 'tis not thus—and 'tis not here
       Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now,
Where Glory decks the hero's bier,
                                    Or binds his brow.

   The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,
       Glory and Greece around us see!
The Spartan borne upon his shield
                                    Was not more free.

   Awake (not Greece—she is awake!)
       Awake, my Spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake
                                    And then strike home!

   Tread those reviving passions down
       Unworthy Manhood—unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
                                    Of beauty be.

   If thou regret'st thy Youth, why live?
       The land of honourable Death
Is here:—up to the Field, and give
                                    Away thy breath!

   Seek out—less often sought than found—
       A Soldier's Grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy Ground,
                                    And take thy rest.

Form: ballad
Holy Sonnets: This is my play's last scene
by John Donne

This is my play's last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race,
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span's last inch, my minute's latest point;
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space;
But my'ever-waking part shall see that face
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to'heaven, her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they'are bred, and would press me, to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

Form: sonnet
The Maid’s Lament
by Walter Savage Landor

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,
         I feel I am alone.
I check’d him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,
         Alas! I would not check.
For reasons not to love him once I sought,
         And wearied all my thought
To vex myself and him: I now would give
         My love could he but live
Who lately lived for me, and, when he found
         ’Twas vain, in holy ground
He hid his face amid the shades of death.
         I waste for him my breath
Who wasted his for me! but mine returns,
         And this lorn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
         And waking me to weep
Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years
         Wept he as bitter tears.
Merciful God! such was his latest prayer,
         These may she never share.
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,
         Than daisies in the mould,
Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,
         His name and life’s brief date.
Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe’er you be,
         And oh! pray too for me!

Form: couplet
Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
   Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
   Over the sea to Skye.

Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
   Eigg on the starboard bow;
Glory of youth glowed in his soul;
   Where is that glory now?

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
   Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
   Over the sea to Skye.

Give me again all that was there,
   Give me the sun that shone!
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
   Give me the lad that's gone!

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
   Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
   Over the sea to Skye.

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
   Mountains of rain and sun,
All that was good, all that was fair,
   All that was me is gone.

Form: common measure
Fancy
by John Keats

Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy
To banish Even from her sky.
Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw'd,
Fancy, high-commission'd:—send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shalt quaff it:—thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;
Rustle of the reaped corn;
Sweet birds antheming the morn:
And, in the same moment, hark!
'Tis the early April lark,
Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plum'd lillies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway
Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearled with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering,
While the autumn breezes sing.

    Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Every thing is spoilt by use:
Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-ey'd as Ceres' daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe's, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet
And Jove grew languid.—Break the mesh
Of the Fancy's silken leash;
Quickly break her prison-string
And such joys as these she'll bring.—
Let the winged Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

Form: couplet
The other two, slight air and purging fire (Sonnet 45)
by William Shakespeare

The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppress’d with melancholy;
Until life’s composition be recurred
By those swift messengers return’d from thee,
Who even but now come back again, assured
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:
    This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,
    I send them back again and straight grow sad.

Form: sonnet
The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
      The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
      The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
      Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.

Form: common measure
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes (Sonnet 29)
by William Shakespeare

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;
    For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
    That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Form: sonnet
Book 7, Epigram 47: De Hominis Ortu & Sepultura.  ﻿
by Thomas Bastard

Nature which headlong into life doth throw us,
 With our feet forward to our grave doth bring us,
 What is less ours, than this our borrowed breath,
 We stumble into life, we go to death.
 ﻿

Form: couplet
The Power of Armies is a Visible Thing
by William Wordsworth

The power of Armies is a visible thing,
Formal and circumscribed in time and space;
But who the limits of that power shall trace
Which a brave People into light can bring
Or hide, at will,—for freedom combating
By just revenge inflamed? No foot may chase,
No eye can follow, to a fatal place
That power, that spirit, whether on the wing
Like the strong wind, or sleeping like the wind
Within its awful caves.—From year to year
Springs this indigenous produce far and near;
No craft this subtle element can bind,
Rising like water from the soil, to find
In every nook a lip that it may cheer.

Form: sonnet
From fairest creatures we desire increase (Sonnet 1)
by William Shakespeare

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decrease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel.
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that are now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
     Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
     To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Form: sonnet
To The Sonnet
by Ameen Rihani

Though cribbed and gyved, thou canst within thy 
          walls 
Unfold a wondrous wealth of worlds unseen,
And flood the soul’s abyss with moon-light sheen,
As well as darken passions’ gilded halls ; 
Thy fourteen outlets are so many falls 
From which gush out the prisoned joy, or 
         spleen— 
The silvery cascades, or the billows green,
And either a sea of bliss or grief recalls. 
Thou goddess of the gems of Fancy’s deep, 
Though few thy facets, they reflect the whole 
Of inner-self in multi-shaded hues ; 
Thou art the couch of dreams that never sleep ; 
Thou art the phoenix of the poet’s soul,
As well the crystal palace of his muse.

Form: sonnet
Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd.
by Mark Twain

And did young Stephen sicken,
   And did young Stephen die?
And did the sad hearts thicken,
   And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of
   Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round him thickened,
   'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
   Nor measles drear, with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name
   Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe
   That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
   Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye,
   Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly,
   By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;
   Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
   In the realms of the good and great.

Form: common measure
Sonnet [Upon these deeps in days remotely old]
by Luis G. Dato

Upon these deeps in days remotely old,
A daring band of Malays flung their sails
Intrepidly. On tempests, storms, and gales,
On ocean furies, full their valor told,
Each gust a grave, each grave a tale unscrolled,
A covert pathos of the tongueless wave
For utterance suspiring. O the brave
Unnumbered dead that slumber in their fold!
Some day a bark of light will Hereward glide.
By no one sent, whence no one living knows,
And, breaking centuries of deep repose,
Upgather from the sea the dead who died
In search of it. A gleam these deeps will tear,
And give new life to all that slumbered there.

Form: sonnet
Winter
by Anne Hunter

Behold the gloomy tyrant’s awful form
Binding the captive earth in icy chains;
His chilling breath sweeps o’er the watery plains,
Howls in the blast, and swells the rising storm.

See from its centre bends the rifted tower,
Threat’ning the lowly vale with frowning pride,
O’er the scared flocks that seek its sheltering side,
A fearful ruin o’er their heads to pour.

While to the cheerful hearth and social board
Content and ease repair, the sons of want
Receive from niggard fate their pittance scant;
And where some shed bleak covert may afford,
Wan poverty, amidst her meagre host
Casts round her haggard eyes, and shivers at the frost.

Form: sonnet
Sonnet 1: Dost see how unregarded now
by Sir John Suckling

Dost see how unregarded now
       That piece of beauty passes?
There was a time when I did vow
       To that alone;
   But mark the fate of faces;
The red and white works now no more on me
Than if it could not charm, or I not see.

And yet the face continues good,
       And I have still desires,
Am still the selfsame flesh and blood,
       As apt to melt
   And suffer from those fires;
Oh some kind pow’r unriddle where it lies,
Whether my heart be faulty, or her eyes?

She ev’ry day her man does kill,
       And I as often die;
Neither her power then, nor my will
       Can question’d be.
   What is the mystery?
Sure beauty’s empires, like to greater states,
Have certain periods set, and hidden fates.

Form: sonnet
Loss
by Winifred M. Letts

In losing you I lost my sun and moon
And all the stars that blessed my lonely night.
I lost the hope of Spring, the joy of June,
The Autumn’s peace, the Winter’s firelight.
I lost the zest of living, the sweet sense
Expectant of your step, your smile, your kiss;
I lost all hope and fear and keen suspense
For this cold calm, sans agony, sans bliss.
I lost the rainbow’s gold, the silver key
That gave me freedom of my town of dreams;
I lost the path that leads to Faërie
By beechen glades and heron-haunted streams.
I lost the master word, dear love, the clue
That threads the maze of life when I lost you.

Form: sonnet