To My Mother / Christina Rossetti

Harrison Weir (1824-1906),

 Flowers for Mother,  ca. 1880.

 Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. 

    To My Mother

    To-day's your natal day;
            Sweet flowers I bring:
    Mother, accept, I pray
            My offering.

    And may you happy live,
            And long us bless;
    Receiving as you give
            Great happiness.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from Poems for Children, 1907

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Christina Rossetti biography

"To My Mother" read for Eternal Poems.

Holy Ghost Cement / AE Reiff

Holy Ghost Cement

Hopkins left the world unchanged.

Who else need try the ooze of oil,

shook foil, Holy Ghost brood?

We favor Herbert's command.

God's Grandeur lives or dies.

What falls between is vain.

Words to defend against bandits

vibrate around those we love.

How else guard?

Yesterday angels came to a house

that armed robbers feared,

"He guards the lives of his faithful ones,"

"Holy Father, protect them by the power

of your Name, the Name you gave me."

Up on a ladder with scaffold and boards,

with faith I am building the Name with the Word.

~~

AE Reiff, 2026

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]

AE Reiff biography

God's Grandeur / Gerard Manley Hopkins

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~~
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

 "God's Grandeur" read by Charles III. Courtesy The Royal Family..

May's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for May 2026:

A Road Song in May, by Francis Sherman

[...]

O wind that bloweth from the west,

Is not this morning road the best?

— Let us go hand in hand, as free

And glad as little children be

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/05/road-song-in-may-francis-sherman.html

Penny's Top 20 / April 2026

    

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Only the Lonely, George J. Dance

  2.  Two Tramps in Mud Time, Robert Frost

  3.  Daffodils, William Wordsworth

  4.  Easter-day, Henry Vaughan

  5.  Blossom-Time, Hazel Hall

  6.  Easter, John Freeman

  7.  Elegy, Florence Kilpatrick Mixter

  8.  March, Annette Wynne

  9.  April, Jane G. Austin

10.  Aprilian, Bliss Carman

11.  April, George J. Dance

12.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

13.  Sonnet 1977, Will Dockery

14.  April the Magician, Annette Wynne

15.  Dandelions, George Sulzbach

16.  Skating, William Wordsworth

17.  Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

18.  Spring, Richard Chenevix Trench

19.  Metric Figure, William Carlos Williams

20. A Russian Easter, Marya Zaturenska

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

Aprilian / Bliss Carman

Arthur Hughes (1832-1915), April Love,

 ca. 1855. Wikimedia Commons.

Aprilian

When April came with sunshine
And showers and lilac bloom,
My heart with sudden gladness
Was like a fragrant room.

Her eyes were heaven's own azure,
As deep as God's own truth.
Her soul was made of rapture
And mystery and youth.

She knew the sorry burden
Of all the ancient years,
Yet could not dwell with sadness
And memory and tears.

With her there was no shadow
Of failure nor despair,
But only loving joyance.
O Heart, how glad we were!

~~
Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
from Later Poems, 1926

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

Bliss Carman biography

April the Magician / Annette Wynne

April the Magician

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978),

The Magician, November 1919.

April has a wand of gold.
    To touch the trees; and then
They who were quite poor and old
    Grow young and rich again.

When April changes hill and tree,
    The birds rush back to you,
And grasses come again for me,
    And all the world grows new!

~~
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, the United States, and  

the European Union]

Annette Wynne biography