February's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for February:

Afterglow, by George J. Dance

My darling, on this night of Valentine's, 

Excuse me while I find a way to say 

I love you, knowing I could never pay 

For thirty years with only fourteen lines

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2012/02/afterglow-george-dance.html

Penny's Top 20 / January 2026

   

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in January 2026:

  1.  The Winter Lakes, William Wilfred Campbell

  2.  Snow, Snow, George J. Dance

  3.  A Song for the New Year, Barry Cornwall

  4.  The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

  5.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  6.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  7.  Winter, Bernard Barton

  8.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  9.  A January Night, Thomas Hardy

10.  Mild is the Parting Year, Walter Savage Landor

11.  January, John Clare

12.  The Year Has Changed Its Name, William Morris

13.  January, Ellwood Roberts

14.  Winterworld Descending, Will Dockery

15.  January, Jane G. Austin

16.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

17.  Prey, George J. Dance

18.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

19.  I'm January, Annette Wynne

20. January, George J. Dance

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

I'm January / Annette Wynne

I'm January

I'm January bringing you
A year of days — all brand, brand new;
I step upon the frosty ground
When chimes and sleighbells ring around;
You welcome me and children sing,
And joy comes into everything.
I bring you love and lots of cheer,
And work and friends for all the year.

~~
Annette Wynne (1889-1952)

from For Days and Days: A year-round treasury of child verse, 1919

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

Annette Wynne biography

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Girl in Snow with Dog, 1916 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

January / Jane G. Austin

January

O dark and cold! O dead and drear!
    O bitter end of weary strife!
Art thou indeed the glad New Year,
    Thou stillborn mockery of life?

And art thou then the final fate,
    The end for which our years were born,
So white, so still, so desolate,
    A night that never leads to morn?

It is not peace, this frozen calm,
    And yet it is surcease of pain,
Nepenthe is the surest balm,
    For wounds so healed, bleed not again.

Yes, we will love thee, month of death,
    Yes, we will call thee glad New Year,
Freeze with thy kiss my weary breath,
    See, I am thine, I know no fear.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[February]

Jane G. Austin biography

    Lori Iverson, National Elk Refuge, Wyoming, January 2012. CC BY 2.0 Wikimedia Commons.

January / Ellwood Roberts

January

The short midwinter days are here,
The nights are frosty now and chill —
The solemn midnight of the year —
The snow lies deep on vale and hill.
No longer runs the streamlet nigh,
The ice has bound its waters fast;
An Arctic wind is sweeping by,
The bare trees shiver in the blast.

How changed the Schuylkill's tide! no more
It sparkles in the noonday light;
The ice extends from shore to shore,
Its strength increasing, day and night.
The skaters o'er its surface fly,
In rhythmic motion, all the day,
While dark clouds sweep across the sky,
Foreboding tempests on the way.

And soon we see the storm begin,
All day the snowflakes scurry past,
All night we hear the tempest's din,
The forests bend beneath the blast.
In whirling clouds the snow is hurled,
Along the hillside, down the glen;
Another day the whole bright world
Is shut by drifts beyond our ken.

But soon the sun resumes his sway,
His noontide beams are warm and bright;
The stubborn ice-bridge yields by day,
Though drear and sombre falls the night.
Alternate thaw and storm and cold,
With snowdrifts deep and changeful sky,
The earth in chill embrace enfold —
And so the month goes slowly by.

Midwinter days and nights so drear,
With storm-clouds sweeping o'er the sky—
The solemn midnight of the year
Soon pass and leave no token nigh.
Bare trees that quake beneath the blast,
Will yet be clothed in leafage bright,
And days so chill — the Winter past —
Be bathed in floods of Spring-time light.

~~
Ellwood Roberts (1846-1921)
From Lyrics of Quakerism, and other poems, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ellwood Roberts biography

Logopop, Moonlight in the middle of nowhere 4, 2011. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

A January Night / Thomas Hardy

A January Night
         (1879)

The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
        The water wheezes.

The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour's face;
There is some hid dread afoot
        That we cannot trace.

Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in to-day?
        We do not know.

~~
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
from Moments of Vision, 1917

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

Thomas Hardy biography

"A January Night" read by Jean Aked. Courtesy jeanakedpoetry.

Snow, Snow / George J. Dance

Snow, Snow

Snow, snow, get out of here;
Come again some other year.
I'd rather that the skies were clear.
Snow, snow, get out of here.

~~
George J. Dance, 2026

"Snow, Snow" by George J. Dance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Unported License. 

George J. Dance biography

Ser Armantio de Nicolao, Snowstorm aftermath in northern Virginia, 2009.

CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.