The Courage That My Mother Had / Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Courage That My Mother Had

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

~~
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
from Mine the Harvest, 1949

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay biography 

 

"The courage that my mother had" read by Kathryn Sadjak  Courtesy Millay Society.

The Entering May / Ralph Waldo Emerson

from May-Day

The Entering May

Where shall we keep the holiday,
And duly greet the entering May?
Too strait and low our cottage doors,
And all unmeet our carpet floors;
Nor spacious court, nor monarch’s hall,
Suffice to hold the festival.
Up and away! where haughty woods
Front the liberated floods:
We will climb the broad-backed hills,
Hear the uproar of their joy;
We will mark the leaps and gleams
Of the new-delivered streams,
And the murmuring rivers of sap
Mount in the pipes of the trees,
Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,
Which for a spike of tender green
Bartered its powdery cap;
And the colors of joy in the bird,
And the love in its carol heard,
Frog and lizard in holiday coats,
And turtle brave in his golden spots;
While cheerful cries of crag and plain
Reply to the thunder of river and main.

~~
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882
from Through the Year with the Poets: May 

(edited by Oscar Fay Adams), 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ralph Waldo Emerson biography

"May-Day" from Ralph Waldo Emerson YouTube. (Selection runs 8.18-9.10).

Song on May Morning / John Milton

Song on May Morning

Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
    Hail bounteous May that dost inspire
    Mirth and youth, and warm desire,
    Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing,
    Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song,
    And welcom thee, and wish thee long.

~~
John Milton (1608-1674)
from Poetical Works, 1900

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Milton biography

"Song on May Morning" read by Tom Kinsella. Courtesy LITT at Stockton.

Waiting for the May / Denis MacCarthy

Waiting for the May (Summer Longings)

                Las mananas floridas de Abril y Mayo. – Calderon

    Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
        Waiting for the May –
Waiting for the pleasant rambles,
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles,
    With the woodbine alternating,
        Scent the dewy way.
    Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
        Waiting for the May.

    Ah! my heart is sick with longing,
        Longing for the May –
Longing to escape from study,
To the young face fair and ruddy,
    And the thousand charms belonging
        To the summer's day.
    Ah! my heart is sick with longing,
        Longing for the May.

    Ah! my heart is sore with sighing,
        Sighing for the May –
Sighing for their sure returning,
When the summer beams are burning,
    Hopes and flowers that, dead or dying,
        All the winter lay.
    Ah! my heart is sore with sighing,
        Sighing for the May.

    Ah! my heart is pained and throbbing,
        Throbbing for the May –
Throbbing for the sea-side billows,
Or the water-wooing willows,
    Where in laughing and in sobbing
        Glide the streams away.
    Ah! my heart is pained and throbbing,
    Throbbing for the May.

    Waiting sad, dejected, weary,
        Waiting for the May.
Spring goes by with wasted warnings,
Moon-lit evenings, sun-bright mornings;
    Summer comes, yet dark and dreary
        Life still ebbs away:
    Man is ever weary, weary,
        Waiting for the May!

~~

Denis Florence MacCarthy (1817-1882)

from Poems, 1882

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Denis MacCarthy biography

Michael Martin, May Morning, 2014. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

May's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for May 2025:

May Wind, by Sara Teasdale

 I said, "I have shut my heart

As one shuts an open door,

That Love may starve within

And trouble me no more."

[...]

(read by Aimee Reads Poetry)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-wind-teasdale.html

Penny's Top 20 / April 2025

 

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in April 2025:

  1.  The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot

  2.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  3.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  4.  An April Fool of Long Ago, Jean Blewett

  5.  An April Shower, George J. Dance

  6.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

  7.  April on the Battlefields, Leonora Speyer

  8.  Spring Again, George J. Dance
  9.  Skating, William Wordsworth

10.  April, Folgore de San Geminiano

11.  An Easter Carol, Christina Rossetti

12.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

13.  The Lonely Hunter, Fiona MacLeod

14.  To the Sea Angel, Will Dockery

15.  March, Folgore de San Geminiano

16.  The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams

17.  Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens

18.  Puella Parvula, Wallace Stevens

19.  Penny's Blog 2.0, George J. Dance

20. August, Edmund Spenser

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

April / Folgore de San Geminiano

from Of the Months

April

I give you meadow-lands in April, fair
    With over-growth of beautiful green grass;
    There among fountains the glad hours shall pass,
And pleasant ladies bring you solace there.
With steeds of Spain and ambling palfreys rare;
    Provencal songs and dances that surpass;
    And quaint French mummings; and through hollow brass
A sound of German music on the air.
And gardens ye shall have, that every one
    May lie at ease about the fragrant place;
        And each with fitting reverence shall bow down
        Unto that youth to whom I gave a crown
    Of precious jewels like to those that grace
The Babylonian Kaiser, Prestcr John.

~~
Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Limbourg brothers, "April" from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 

ca. 1402-1416. Wikimedia Commons.