Christmas at Melrose / Leslie Pinckney Hill

Christmas at Melrose

Come home with me a little space
And browse about our ancient place,
Lay by your wonted troubles here
And have a turn of Christmas cheer.
These sober walls of weathered stone
Can tell a romance of their own,
And these wide rooms of devious line
Are kindly meant in their design.
Sometimes the north wind searches through,
But be shall not be rude to you.
We’ll light a log of generous girth
For winter comfort, and the mirth
Of healthy children you shall see
About a sparkling Christmas tree.
Eleanor, leader of the fold,
Hermione with heart of gold,
Elaine with comprehending eyes,
And two more yet of coddling size,
Natalie pondering all that’s said,
And Mary with the cherub head —
All these shall give you sweet content
And care-destroying merriment,
While one with true madonna grace
Moves round the glowing fire-place
Where father loves to muse aside
And grandma sits in silent pride.
And you may chafe the wasting oak,
Or freely pass the kindly joke
To mix with nuts and home-made cake
And apples set on coals to bake.
Or some fine carol we will sing
In honor of the Manger King
Or hear great Milton’s organ verse
Or Plato’s dialogue rehearse
What Socrates with his last breath
Sublimely said of life and death.
These dear delights we fain would share
With friend and kinsman everywhere,
And from our door see them depart
Each with a little lighter heart.

~~

Leslie Pinckney Hill (1880-1960)

from The Wings of Oppression, 1921

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Leslie Pinckney Hill biography 

"Christmas at Melrose" read by the Pen to Ptint Creative Writing Community.

Joy like a stream flows through the Christmas-streets / Alexander Smith

from Sonnets

Joy like a stream flows through the Christmas-streets,
But I am sitting in my silent room,
Sitting all silent in congenial gloom.
To-night, while half the world the other greets
With smiles and grasping hands and drinks and meats,
I sit and muse on my poetic doom;
Like the dim scent within a budded rose,
A joy is folded in my heart; and when
I think on Poets nurtured 'mong the throes,
And by the lowly hearths of common men, —
Think of their works, some song, some swelling ode
With gorgeous music growing to a close,
Deep-muffled as the dead -march of a god, —
My heart is burning to be one of those.

~~
Alexander Smith (1830-1867)
from Poems, 1853

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alexander Smith biography

Jacobus Josephus Eeckhout  (1793–1861), Writing Man, 1859. 

Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. 

Thou Gloomy December / Robert Burns

Thou Gloomy December

Ance mair I hail thee, thou gloomy December!
    Ance mair I hail thee wi' sorrow and care:
Sad was the parting thou makes me remember –
    Parting wi' Nancy, oh! ne'er to meet mair!

Fond lovers' parting is sweet, painful pleasure,
    Hope beaming mild on the soft parting hour;
But the dire feeling, O farewell for ever!
    Is anguish unmingled, and agony pure!

Wild as the winter now tearing the forest,
    Till the last leaf o' the summer is flown,
Such is the tempest has shaken my bosom,
    Till my last hope and last comfort is gone!

Still as I hail thee, thou gloomy December,
    Still shall I hail thee wi' sorrow and care;
For sad was the parting thou makes me remember,
    Parting wi' Nancy, oh! ne'er to meet mair.

~~
Robert Burns (1759-1796), 1791

from Scots Musical Museum, 1796

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Robert Burns biography

"Thou Gloomy December" read by Robert Carlyle. Courtesy Robert Carlyle Italia.

Before the Snow / George Parsons Lathrop

Before the Snow

Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
    Shatters the rainy wind. A myriad leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air.
    Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.

Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill,
    Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed,
My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still,
    By thronging fancies wild and wistful led.

Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago
    The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain!
How soon death settles on us, and the snow
    Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain!

Yea, autumn's gone! Yet it robs not my mood
    Of that which makes moods dear,— some shoot of spring
Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood
    We walked in,— memory's rare environing.

And, though they die, the seasons only take
    A ruined substance. All that's best remains
In the essential vision that can make
    One light for life, love, death, their joys, their pains.

~~
George Parsons Lathrop (1851-1898)
from Dreams and Days, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Parsons Lathrop biography

Tom Thompson (1877-1917), Autumn Birches, 1916. Wikimedia Commons.

December's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for December 2024:

In the Bleak Mid-winter, by Christina Rossetti 

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone

[...]

(sung by James Taylor)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-bleak-mid-winter-christina-rossetti.html

 

Penny's Top 20 / November 2024

                                           

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in November 2024:

  1.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  2.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  3.  December, John Clare

  4.  Moonlight Alert, Yvor Winters

  5.  November, George J. Dance

  6.  The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams
  7.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

  8.  For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon
  9.  The Thrush, Edward Thomas

10.  The Death of the Flowers, William Cullen Bryant 

11.  How Sleep the Brave, William Collins

12.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

13.  November in the City, Edith Wyatt

14.  In November, Bliss Carman

15.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

16.  Design for November, William Carlos Williams

17.  November, Edwin Arnold

18.  November, Hartley Coleridge
19.  The March, J.C. Squire

20. 4 autumn American Haiku, Jack Kerouac

Source: Blogger, "Stats"  

November / Hartley Coleridge

Sonnet XVI. 

November

The mellow year is hasting to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last,
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast –
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows:
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,
Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glass'd,
Hangs a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows: 

 In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine,
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define,
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy twine.

~~

Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849)

from Poems, Songs, and Sonnets, 1833

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Hartley Coleridge biography

"November" read by Thomas D.