Dreamers / Siegfried Sassoon

Dreamers

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
    Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
    Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
    Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
    They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
    And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
    And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
    And going to the office in the train.

~~ 

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
from War Poems, 1919

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

"Dreamers" read by Tom O'Bedlam. Courtesy Morphing Reality.

All Day It Has Rained / Alun Lewis

All Day It Has Rained

All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; –
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees:
Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.

And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.

~~
Alun Lewis (1915-1944)
from Raiders' Dawn, and other poems, 1941 

[Poetry is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]

Alun Lewis biography

 "All Day It Has Rained" read by Poetry from the Jungle.

Courtesy Flame Tree Estate and Hotel.

There's Nothing Like the Sun / Edward Thomas

There's Nothing Like the Sun

There's nothing like the sun as the year dies,
Kind as it can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountain side or street of town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning's storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March's sun,
Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's,
Or January's, or February's, great days:
And August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said –
Or, if I could live long enough, should say –
'There's nothing like the sun that shines today.'
There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Poems, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Thomas biography 

 "There's Nothing Like the Sun" read by John Snelling. Courtesy John Snelling.

November's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for November 2025:

I Speak Your Name, by Sophie Jewett

I speak your name in alien ways, while yet
November smiles from under lashes wet.
In the November light I see you stand
Who love the fading woods and withered land
[...]

(read by Miranda)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2012/11/i-speak-your-name_24.html

Penny's Top 20 / October 2025

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Christmas Sonnet, E.A. Woodward

  2.  Spring Longings, Francis W. Bourdillon

  3.  October, Eleanor Wylie

  4.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

  5.  Suspending Winter Willingly in Disbelief, Cathleen Harvea Guthrie

  6.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  7.  Memory of My Father, Patrick Kavanagh

  8.  Coats, JD Shirk

  9.  The Cricket to October, Anne Whitney

10.  Away, George J. Dance

11.  October, Tom MacInnes 

12.  Autumn, Richard Chenevix Trench

13.  The Empty Places, Marjory Nicholls

14.  Skating, William Wordsworth

15.  Leaf-Fall in October, John Freeman

16.  Love Songs of the Open Road, Kendall Banning

17.  World Trade Center, Julia Vinograd

18.  October, Folgore da San Geminiano

19.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

20. October's gold is dim, David Gray

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

Prey / George J. Dance

Prey

"Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?"
Silence, followed by a click and hum.
Slamming down, her lower arm goes numb.
She has to get outside; she needs some air.

The leaden sky leaks. Trees are gaunt and bare.
She walks – then runs – but every street has some
Eyes fondling her legs, her breasts, her bum, 

And running filthy glances through her hair.

She's reached her block now – finally she nears
Her home, runs up the walk – inside once more,
Panting, trying to calm her breath and fears.

She's sure that bedroom door was closed before,
And weren't the lights on? What's that noise she hears?
How could she forget to lock the door?

~~
George J. Dance, 2007

from Logos, and other logoi, 2021

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography

October / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

October

Next, for October, to some shelter'd coign
    Flouting the winds I'll hope to find you slunk:
    Though in bird-shooting (lest all sport be sunk),
Your foot still press the turf, the horse your groin.
At night with sweethearts in the dance you'll join,
    And drink the blessed must, and get quite drunk.
    There's no such life for any human trunk;
And that's a truth that rings like golden coin!
Then, out of bed again when morning's come,
    Let your hands drench your face refreshingly,
        And take your physic roast, with flask and knife.
Sounder and snugger you shall feel at home
    Than lake-fish, river-fish, or fish at sea,
        Inheriting the cream of Christian life.

~~
Folgore da 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 da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Relief of a medieval scene of three couples dancing. Wikimedia Commons.