Across a Wall / J.D. Shirk

Across a Wall

An autumn piled against a wall
Of ancient, rain washed, standing stones

There, stories of another's time
Were whispers carried on the wind

Beyond the wall, a winter waits
With dreams beyond the deepest sleep

Within those dreams, are timeless souls
In restful waiting, watching there

While years pass turning, slowly on
Until the winter turns to spring

And we, while summer still remains
Place stones in walls along our ways

Where others, when the autumn falls
Across our time washed, standing stones

Will hear in whispers on the wind
The stories of a time we knew

Before the sleep of winter's night
Wove dreams into slow turning years.

JD Shirk © 9/24

Reflections in Netley Abbey / Edward Hamley

Reflections in Netley Abbey

Alone, unseen, at this mild sober hour,
When fading Autumn with his season pale
Has ting'd the woods, I seek the ruin'd tow'r,
And mould'ring heaps, that spread the thorny dale.

Here sad reflection to the eye recalls
The spires commanding far the cheerful deeps,
The fretted pinnacles, and window'd walls,
Where now the melancholy ivy creeps.

The pond'ring stranger views with silent dread,
As to the stony cell he bends his way,
The broken roof suspended o'er his head,
Where mingling shafts and sculptur'd arms decay.

No hallow'd hymn now sounds, where wildly strown
With fragments rude the desert choir appears;
But echoing loud amid the cloysters lone
The daw's hoarse clamour meets my startled ears.

Void is the nich, where erst in holy state
Perhaps some Abbot's gorgeous image lay;
The slumb'ring brothers share their ruler's fate,
And not a stone records their useless day.

Alas! whate'er their virtues or their crimes,
'Tis all in blank oblivion buried deep;
Nor did they ween, how little future times
Would share their bliss, or for their sorrows weep.

For ev'n where droning Indolence repos'd,
Some finer souls might ache with keen distress;
And haply many a wretch full willing clos'd
His eyes, and shunn'd a life he could not bless.

Perchance some vot'ry sad of feeling heart,
As o'er the fading lawn he mus'd at eve,
Anxious might see the passing sail depart,
And call to mind a world he wept to leave.

Ev'n then some tender maid he lov'd too well,
And gave in thought th' endearing name of wife,
Might make his bleeding heart with sorrow swell,
And deeply rue his cold unsocial life;

Sad might he heave a deep-drawn sigh unseen,
And down his cheek a venial tear might fall,
To think how calm, how blest his days had been
With her, his bosom's joy, his life, his all.

The bell slow-beating thro' the gloom of night,
Might wake his soul to other thoughts than pray'r,
And, while his voice perform'd each solemn rite,
His wand'ring heart might own a tend'rer care.

So from his native woodlands torn away,
The little songster, conscious of his pain,
Sits dull and drooping all the livelong day,
And sings no more, or sings a sadder strain;

While from his joyless prison he surveys,
Flutt'ring with eager heart from side to side,
Earth's flow'ry mantle, and the budding sprays,
And hears in fancy still his long-lost bride.

~~

Edward Hamley (1764-1834)
from Poems of Various Kinds, 1795

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Hamley biography

Patrick Nasmyth (1787–1831), Netley Abbey. Wikimedia Commons.

December's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for December:

Christmas at Sea, by Robert Louis Stevenson 

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;

The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;

The wind was a nor'-wester, blowing squally off the sea;

And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

[...]

(sung by The Longest Johns)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-at-sea-robert-louis-stevenson_29.html

Penny's Top 20 / November 2025

 

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Prey, George J. Dance

  2.  December, John Clare

  3.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  4.  A November Grave, James B. Kenyon

  5.  How happy I was if I could forget, Emily Dickinson

  6.  I Speak Your Name, Sophie Jewett

  7.  All Day It Has Rained, Alun Lewis

  8.  Dreamers, Siegfried Sassoon

  9.  Autumn, John Clare

10.  There's Nothing Like the Sun, Edward Thomas

11.  Away, George J. Dance

12.  United Dames of America, Wallace Stevens

13.  November, Folgore da San Geminiano

14.  November, Maurice Thompson

15.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

16.  Autumn Days, Jones Very

17.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

18.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

19.  Wander-Thirst, Gerald Gould

20. Theme in Yellow, Carl Sandburg

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

November / Folgore da San Geminiano

November

Let baths and wine-butts be November's due,
    With thirty mule-loads of broad gold-pieces;
    And canopy with silk the streets that freeze;
And keep your drink-horns steadily in view.
Let every trader have his gain of you:
    Clareta shall your lamps and torches send, —
    Caeta, citron-candies without end; 

And each shall drink, and help his neighbour to.
And let the cold be great, and the fire grand:
    And still for fowls, and pastries sweetly wrought,
        For hares and kids, for roast and boil'd, be sure
You always have your appetites at hand;
    And then let night howl and heaven fall, so nought
        Be miss'd that makes a man's bed-furniture.

~~
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

from Livre d'heures de la reine Yolande, 15th century. Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn Days / Jones Very

Autumn Days

The winds are out with loud increasing shout,
    Where late before them walked the biting frost,
Whirling the leaves in their wild sport about,
    And twig and limb athwart our path are tost.
But still the sun looks kindly on the year,
    And days of summer warmth will linger yet;
And still the birds amid the fields we hear,
    For the ripe grain and scattered seeds they get.
The shortening days grow slowly less and less,
    And winter comes with many a warning on;
And still some day with kindly smile will bless,
    Till the last hope's deceit is fledged and gone,
Before the deepening snows block up the way,
And the sweet fields are made of howling blasts the prey.

~~
Jones Very (1813-1880)
from Poems, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Jones Very biography

Dori, Trees in the Wind, November 2007. CC BY-SA 3,0, Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn / John Clare

Autumn

          1
I love the fitfull gusts that shakes
 The casement all the day
And from the mossy elm tree takes
 The faded leaf away
Twirling it by the window-pane
With thousand others down the lane

      2
I love to see the shaking twig
 Dance till the shut of eve
The sparrow on the cottage rig
 Whose chirp would make believe
That spring was just now flirting by
In summers lap with flowers to lie

      3
I love to see the cottage smoke
 Curl upwards through the naked trees
The pigeons nestled round the coat
 On dull November days like these
The cock upon the dung-hill crowing
The mill sails on the heath agoing

      4
The feather from the ravens breast
 Falls on the stubble lea
The acorns near the old crows nest
 Fall pattering down the tree
The grunting pigs that wait for all
Scramble and hurry where they fall

~~
John Clare (1793-1864)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Clare biography

"Autumn (I Love the Fitful Gusts)" read by Shanid. Courtesy Everyday - Poetry.