Bath / Amy Lowell

from Spring Day

Bath

    The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

    The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

    Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.

    The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

~~
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
from Men, Women, and Ghosts, 1916

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

Amy Lowell biography

"Bath" read by Claude the Reciter.

A Lost Morning / Herman Charles Merivale

A Lost Morning

(Midsummer)

Oh foolish world! The writer's necromancy
    At times is powerless on the restive pen,
And the blank page reflects the lagging fancy,
            Which has no message then.

The honest schoolboy, of his cricket dreaming,
    Could trace no ruder figures o'er the slate,
Than those which yield my brain, with nothing teeming,
            Outlet articulate.

My tale of work, in well-considered order,
    Lies fair before me on the laden desk;
But nothing in me speaks, save dreams that border
            The grave with the grotesque.

Plans jotted down for many-sided labor
    Invite in turn from various pigeon-holes,
Where the next story has some play for neighbor,
            Stocked with imagined souls.

Yet spite of will, o'er which men make such pother,
    I cannot call one spirit from the deep,
Where all the thoughts, which crowded each on other,
            Like very Merlin sleep.

Is it the sweet and heavy hum of summer,
    Full charged with the mesmeric scent of thyme,
That, through my window, an unbidden comer,
            Dissolves them into rhyme?

Is it the sun, in his new kinghood, sharing
    The message of pure luxury with me,
Which to the footsteps of his throne is bearing
            The murmur of the sea?—

And whispering, "Rest thee, over-anxious mortal,
    Awhile oblivious of the world's commands,
Content to offer at my golden portal
            A chaplet from thy hands.

"E'en weave it as thou wilt; thy garden musters
    Mute hints of ditties to inspire the lute;
And to thy lips and sense stoop glowing clusters
            Of glowing flower and fruit.

Fritz Zuber-Bühler, Daydreams.

Wikimedia Commons.

"Bring me no ode of an heroic measure;
    Tell me no tale; seek no satiric theme,
But merely babble, out of very pleasure,
            Thine unconnected dream!"

What could I answer? All the heat was singing,
    The insect chorus hummed in undertone;
Slow to my feet my mighty dog was bringing
            A too-exacting bone.

So happy in mere happiness of living,
    I let the hours slip unimproved by,
And, past the hope of cultured man's forgiving,
            Thus "diem perdidi."

So have I writ lines that begin and end not,
    An idle morning's thriftless castaway;
For whence they came, and whither tend or tend not,
            Critic! 'tis thine to say.

Herman Charles Merivale (1839-1906)
from Through the Year with the Poets: July, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Herman Charles Merivale biography

July / Susan Hartley Swett

July

When the scarlet cardinal tells
    Her dream to the dragon fly,
And the lazy breeze makes a nest in the trees,
    And murmurs a lullaby,
            It is July.

When the tangled cobweb pulls
    The cornflower's cap awry,
And the lilies tall lean over the wall
    To bow to the butterfly,
            It is July.

When the heat like a mist veil floats,
    And poppies flame in the rye,
And the silver note in the streamlet's throat
    Has softened almost to a sigh,
            It is July.

When the hours are so still that time
    Forgets them, and lets them lie
'Neath petals pink till the night stars wink
    At the sunset in the sky,
            It is July.

When each finger-post by the way
    Says that Slumbertown is nigh;
When the grass is tall, and the roses fall,
    And nobody wonders why,
            It is July.

~~
Susan Hartley Swett (1843-1907)
from Through the Year with the Poets: July, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide] 

Susan Hartley Swett biography

Txllxt TxllxT, Uitkijkpunt, Horsmeertjes, July 2010. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

In Young July / Lucy Larcom

Txllxt TxllxT, Texel, Hoge Berg,

 Doolhof, July 2010. CC BY-SA 4.0, 

Wikimedia Commons.

In Young July

from Thirty-five

The sun hangs calm at summer's poise;
    The earth lies bathed in shimmering noon,
At rest from all her cheerful noise,
    With heartstrings silently in tune.

The time, how beautiful and dear,
    When early fruits begin to blush,
And the full leafage of the year
    Sways o'er them with a sheltering hush!

The clouds that fleck the warm, blue deep
    Like shoals of tinted fishes float;
From breathless groves the birds asleep
    Send now and then a dreaming note.

~~
Lucy Larcom (1824-1893)
from Through the Year with the Poets: July, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Lucy Larcom biography

A Rhyme of Summer / James Berry Bensel

A Rhyme of Summer

The daisies nodded in the grass, the buttercups were sleeping,
And just across the river sang the farmers at their reaping;
Upon the hills, so blue and far, the maple leaves were showing
Their pallid beauty in the breeze that from the sea was blowing.
A little maid came through the land with song and rippling laughter;
The buttercups made way for her, the daisies nodded after.

A strong young farmer saw her pause beside the parting river;
She drew a lily from its depth with golden heart a-quiver.
"Thou art more fair than lilies are," said he with head uplifted;
And threw a poppy, which the stream swift to the maiden drifted.
She set the flowers within her hair, — the red and white together;
A cloud grew black before the sun and rainy was the weather.

He came across the river then, this farmer, from his mowing; 

He heeded not the water's depth, he cared not for its flowing.
"O love!" said he, "if gleaming sun and cloudless skies o'erlean us,
The river's barring width may roll unpassed, untried between us;
But when loud thunder fills the air, and clouds and rain come over,
I'd cross the ocean to your side, — I am no fairday lover! "

And so one noon the village bells rang out across the river,
Their music set the buttercups and daisies all a-shiver,
While some one drew a lily from the stream so blithely flowing,
And plucked a blood-red poppy that amid the wheat was growing; 

The maiden set them in her hair — the red and white together —
With many a smile, a tear or two, and glances at the weather.

They passed beneath the chapel's shade — the farmer and the maiden —
Where arches crossed above their heads, with snowy blossoms laden,
And in that place of holy calm the binding words were spoken;
He in his heart bore out the truth, she on her hand the token.
The years went by, and some were bright and some were clouded over,
But ever stood he at her side,— he was no fair-day lover.

~~
James Berry Bensel (1856-1886)

from In the King's Garden, and other poems, 1885

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

James Berry Bensel biography

July / Edwin Arnold

July

Proud, on the bosom of the river.
    White-winged the vessels come and go,
Dropping down with ingots to deliver,
    Drifting up stately on the flow.
Mirrored in the sparkling waters under,
    Mightily rising to the sky,
Kings of the sunshine and the thunder,
    Come they and go they, in July.

Quiet, in the reaches of the river,
    Blooms the sea-poppy all alone;
Hidden by the marshy sedges ever,
    Who knows its golden cup is blown?
Who cares if far-distant billows,
    Eocking the great ships to sea,
Underneath the tassels of the willows
    Rocks the sea-poppy and the bee?

Rocks the marsh-blossom with its burden,
    Onlv a worker bee at most!
Working for nothinQ- but the guerdon
    To live on its honey in the frost.
The outward-bound ye watch, and the incomer;
    The bee and the blossom none espy!
But these have their portion in the summer.
    In the glad, gold sunshine of July.

~~

Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)

from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edwin Arnold biography

Christopher Hilton, Sea poppy on the seashore, Southchurch, 2012. 

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

America / Claude McKay

America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

~~
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
from Harlem Shadows, 1922

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

Claude McKay biography

"America" read by Tubyez Cropper. Courtesy Beinecke Library at Yale.