"The Orient, Half Morocco, 8vo " / Ruth Comfort Mitchell

"The Orient, Half Morocco, 8v0"

Courtesy Internet Archive.

She bought a book, once, with the butter money —

A wild, undreamed of, reckless thing to do!
(So much to manage for the winter schooling;
That split in Hannah Mary's Sunday shoe. . . .)

The cover bravely flaunted gold and scarlet,—
Gave hint and promise of the hidden feast,
Fine-grained and limber, sleek beneath the fingers,
Frankly symbolic of the gorgeous east.

She wrapt it up and laid it in the bureau;
She knew she wouldn't get to read it soon,—
Not while she had the harvesters to cook for,
Tho' maybe ... of a Sunday afternoon. . . .

How often, then, her thoughts went winging to it,
Thro' all the cumbered days she had to wait,
Till, in a scanty hour of hard-won leisure,
She entered shyly thro' the latticed gate:

Dim harims . . . sultans . . . yashmaks . . . cloudy nargillehs,—
Strange sounding words from far-off story lands;
The farm-house fades; the Wishing Carpet bears her
To Kairowan, across the golden sands.

Since then, thro' all the somber woof of living,
For her the mystic Orient weaves its spells;
Faintly, at dawn, down thro' the dairy pasture,
She seems to hear the chime of temple bells.

Now she can see across the piles of mending —
(There is a window in her prison tower!)
Beyond the baking and the baby tending 

The Mueddin calls across the sunset hour.

When the fierce August sun in grudging mercy,
Threatening worse torments for the morrow, sets,
The battered barns, the tanks, the gilded hay cocks,
Are distant domes and towers and minarets.

The sullen farmer, summoned in to supper,
Weary and silent as he slouches down,
To her fresh eyes becomes a mighty Caliph
Whose minions tremble at his slightest frown.

Subtlest of all — of course they do not mark it —
She in herself is gently touched with grace —
The swifter carriage of her toil-warped figure,
The ghost of girlhood in her furrowed face.

Sometimes they have to call her twice, and sharply;
(They see her, and they think that she is there!)
Thro' all the homely clamor, she is hearing
Oh, very near and clear, The Call to Prayer!

~~
Ruth Comfort Mitchell (1882-1954)
from The Night Court, and other verse, 1916

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

Ruth Comfort Mitchell biography

The Upstairs Room / Weldon Kees

The Upstairs Room

It must have been in March the rug wore through.
Now the day passes and I stare
At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,
At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows,
Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes
Stumble and scrape and fall
To the floor my faher stained,
The new blood streaming from his head. The drift
Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that gun's
Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endures.
In March the rug was ragged as the past. The thread
Rots like the lives we fasten on. Now it is August,
And the floor is blank, worn smooth,
And, for my life, imperishable.

~~
Weldon Kees (1914-1955)
from Poetry, August 1948

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Photo: Jonathan Haeber, Upstairs room. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Weldon Kees biography

"The Upstairs Room" courtesy PoemsBeingRead.

(Poem begins at 1:00)

A Summer Night / Robert Hillyer

A Summer Night

The night is a shrill rhythm of insects,
The lighted windows that showed through the leaves
One hy one go out. “Goodnight,”
A voice murmurs in the shadow of vines,
“Goodnight,” and for ever is in the voice.
An old violinist crosses the Fenway
And watches the lights go out. He can almost 

Hear the sigh of the weary bodies.
A freight train puffs ponderously, far
Away to the eastward, and down the highway
A belated motor crowded with singing
Revelers careless of slumber passes
With raucous shout that ribbons to silence.
If only God would step from the stars
And lead his own composition, if only
An old violinist might put his bow
And his violin away for ever.
He hears from under his arm where he clutches
The case, the twang of a plucked string;
The damp of the Fens is chill on the sinews
Of old men and old violins.
But the crickets and treetoads make sweet din
In the meadows, the fireflies spiral downward
Like dropping fragments of moonlight. Strange,
These small accompaniments of desire
Outlive desire itself and its memory.
The city would wholly sleep but for me,
He says, but for me and the arc-lights buzzing
And twitching uneasily in their globes
Like thoughts in a mind when the sun has gone.
He draws from his pocket a thick gold watch
And holds it up. It is half-past two.
Foolish for one to consult the time
On a golden dial this summer night 

Who might more wisely be counting the leaves
Of seventy scattered calendars.

~~

Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

from The Gates of the Compass, 1930

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

Robert Hillyer biography

Eden, Janine and Jim, Night on Third Avenue, 2020. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Love-in-Idleness / Jane G. Austin

Love-in-Idleness

A time for everything? O yes,
And August is the time, I guess,
To gather Love-in-idleness.
Am I not right? Fair one, confess!

Where shall we find it? Everywhere;
It floats upon the sultry air,
It glows through all the garden fair,
Tangles our feet in rosy snare.

How shall we know it? O most sweet,
Thou'lt know it by thy pulses' beat,
Thou'lt know it by the fragrance fleet
What time its flower and fading meet.

It fades so soon? Is not that best?
It dies ere use has dimmed its zest,
It dies in all its grace confessed,
Its hour of glory is its rest.

Hail, August monarch! Lo thy slaves bow down
And weave of Love-in-Idleness thy crown.

~~
Jane G. Austin (1831-1894)
from Through the Year with the Poets: August, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Bob Collowan, A tub of love-in-idleness (viola tricolor) 

[detail], 2013. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[January]

Jane G. Austin biography

Bus Ride on a Summer Night / George J. Dance

Bus Ride on a Summer Night

Bus crammed, I squeeze and stumble to a seat,
Loathing the heat, rank sweat, and noise, so I
Avert my gaze, stare at a cobalt sky
And miles of matching boxes on the street,

Screen shot from YouTube.

Which cut to a new picture suddenly –
Black velvet crossed by lines of red and white
Clear shining beads, bright rosaries of light,
Stretching past the horizon towards infinity . . .

I see the threads that run through every bead,
Each prayer and fear, each joy and agony,
Entangling into one humanity:
One flesh, one blood, from one uncommon seed –

It's passed; I shift, relax into my seat,
And breathe in human life, so warm, so sweet.

~~
George J. Dance, 2007
from Doggerel, and other doggerel, 2015

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography 

August / Edmund Gosse

August

The soul is like a song-bird, and must hold
    Its silent August, or its heart would break;
    From the hot rushes of the unruffled lake
No warbler pipes, and where the elms enfold
Blackbird and thrush, no music is outrolled;
    They wait in solitude and voiceless ache,
    Till, with serenest winds, September wake
The enchanted pipes and wingéd age of gold.
So with the heart, and therefore blame thou not
    Brisk lover, that thy pensive maid is mute,
        Wandering beside thee with a downcast air;
She is not heedless, nor thy love forgot,
    But passion dons her dreamy autumn suit
        To wake renewed in beauty, freshly fair.

~~
Edmund Gosse (1849-1928)
from Firdausi in Exile, and other poems, 1885

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

Edmund Gosse biography

Peder Severin Krøyer (1851–1909), Summer evening on the beach at Skagen, 

The painter and his wife, 1899. Wikimedia Commons.

August's featured poem

   

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for August 2026:

August, by Annette Wynne

August days are hot and still,

Not a breath on house or hill

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2020/08/august-annette-wynne.html