April / Jane G. Austin

April

            Nay, laughing April, stay,
            And while I clasp thee, say:

Art thou a child whose wanton will
    Holds no deep wells of true desire?
Art thou a maid, ay, sweet and chill,
    Whose argent moon beams frozen fire?

She smiles, and weeps, and smiles again,
    Yet knows not why she smiles or weeps,
Unless o'er changeful hearts of men
    By charm of change her hold she keeps.

O changeful heart that cannot rest
    Because it seeks for something higher,
Scaling the heights to stand confessed,
    This is not yet what I desire.

For still beyond our feet or eyes
    In awful sheen there soars a crest.
On that dread height contentment lies,
    Come life, come death, I there will rest!

And so we pass within the cloud
    That hides the topmost mountain range,
And hidden in its frozen shroud,
    "We shall not die, but we shall change."

            So tearful April fies,
            Drawn up to summer skies.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Jane G. Austin biography

Thomson200, Allatoona Mountains seen from Kennesaw Mountain, April 2017 (detail).

CC0 1.0, public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Easter-day / Henry Vaughan

Easter-day

Thou, whose sad heart, and weeping head lies low,
    Whose cloudy breast cold damps invade,
Who never feels the Sun, nor smooths thy brow,
    But sits oppressed in the shade,
                Awake, awake!
And in His Resurrection partake,
    Who, on this day (that thou might rise as He)
    Rose up, and cancelled two deaths due to thee.

Awake! awake! and like the Sun, disperse
    All mists that would usurp this day;
Where are thy Palms, thy branches, and thy verse?
    Hosanna! hark! why dost thou stay?
                Arise, arise,
And with His healing blood anoint thine eyes,
    Thy inward eyes; His blood will cure thy mind,
    Whose spittle only could restore the blind.

~~

Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)

from Silex Scintillans; or, Sacred poems

(edited by W.A. Lewis Bettany), 1905

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry Vaughan biography

Kay Kenyon, Easter Day on Cam Peak, 2011. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Easter / John Freeman

Easter

With Earth's arising riseth He from death,
        To all His faithful saith
                With urgent breath:

"Wake ye, out of your Winter-weary sleep!"
        And the slow pulses leap.
                No more then creep

The heavy days to night, and nights to day.
        The cloud-pack hastens away
                If He but say

Far off and faint and tremulous, "Awake!"
        How the heart's enemies quake
                When His steps shake

 
The silence they have woven as a shroud
        Upon it! Great and proud
                Alike they are bowed.

And as when lovely, radiant queenlike Spring
        Queenlike with her doth bring
                Every dear thing

Earth faints for; and the woods and gleaming meads
        Fulfilled are of their needs;
                And the lost seeds

Are found in keen green blades, and song again
        In birds, and the sweet rain
                Doth teach the plain

That gladness of the heaven-neighbouring hills;
        And the whole amazed Earth thrills
                With bliss that fills

Every hid channel and cell: — So when He rises
        In thousand sweet disguises,
                What swift surprises,

Heats, pregnant showers, flowers and rich airs He gives,
        Till the soul truly lives;
                And the fugitives —

Fear, Hate, Despair — ev'n as they fly are slain!
        O, precious ev'n the pain
                When in each vein

The leaping blood doth the old languors quicken;
        Precious, for hopes that sicken,
                To feel joys thicken

Like sudden leaves wherethrough the cool winds stir;
        Precious past gold and myrrh
                To feel Him near.

But as to some east hillside's dewless breast,
        Naked of leaf and nest,
                Spring, the loved guest,

Comes not, though all the woods her blisses cover.
        And larks but yonder hover
                The soft turf over;

Barren of Thy spring, Lord, unvisited
        Of any rains; but dead,
                Unmemoried,

My heart lies; yea, Thy spring neglects it yet.
        O, canst Thou still forget,
                My need forget?

~~
John Freeman (1880-1929)
from Fifty Poems, 1911

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

John Freeman biography

Jusben, Spring morning, 2011. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

April's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for April 2026:

Two Tramps in Mud Time, by Robert Frost

[...]

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You’re one month on in the middle of May.

[...]

(read by Robert Frost)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2015/04/two-tramps-in-mud-time.html

Penny's Top 30 / March 2026

Penny's Top 30

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

  1.  March, Hart Crane

  2.  Poem for Kathy, Will Dockery

  3.  A March Day in London, Amy Levy

  4.  First of March, Frederick Tennyson

  5.  A Song to Mithras, Rudyard Kipling

  6.  A March Night, Ethelwyn Wetherald

  7.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  8.  First Day of Spring, F.W. Harvey

  9.  A Thought for March 1860, Charles Tennyson Turner

10.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

11.  Saint Patrick, Edwin Markham

12.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

13.  A Morning Song (for the First Day of Spring), Eleanor Farjeon

14.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

15.  Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

16.  March, Jane G. Austin

17.  Afterglow, George J. Dance

18.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

19.  Winterworld Descending, Will Dockery

20. Spring, Richard Chenevix Trench

21. March, Annette Wynne

22. Winter's Muse Calling, JD Shirk

23. Mars & Avril, George J. Dance

24. A Meadow in Spring, Tom Bishop

25. The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff

26. March, George J. Dance

27. Song, Trumbull Stickney

28. March is the Month of Expectation, Emily Dickinson

29. United Dames of America, Wallace Stevens

30. Dear March - Come in -, Emily Dickinson

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

March / Annette Wynne

March

March is windy, March is wild,
Hurries like an eager child;
Puffing mouth and ruddy face,
Rushing in a windy race;
A breath or two he stops, and then
He's puffing madly off again.

March is windy, March is wild,
A rushing, blowing, puffing child.
And why does March go rushing so?
He's trying to catch spring, you know.

~~
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

A.M. Mailick (1869-1946), Children running, ca. 1908 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

Spring / Richard Chenevix Trench

from The Seasons

Spring

Who was it that so lately said,
All pulses in thine heart were dead,

Old Earth, that now in festal robes
Appearest, as a bride new wed?

O wrapt so late in winding-sheet,
Thy winding-sheet, oh! where is fled?

Lo! 'tis an emerald carpet now,
Where the young monarch, Spring, may tread.

Dwight Wiliam Tryon (1849-1925),
Early Spring in New England, 1895.
Wikimedia Commons.

He comes, — and, a defeated king,
Old Winter, to the hills is fled.

The warm wind broke his frosty spear,
And loosed the helmet from his head;

And he weak showers of arrowy sleet
From his strongholds has vainly sped.

All that was sleeping is awake,
And all is living that was dead.

Who listens now, can hear the streams
Leap tinkling down their pebbly bed;

Or see them, from their fetters free,
Like silver snakes the meadows thread.

The joy, the life, the hope of earth,
They slept awhile, they were not dead:

Oh thou who say'st thy sere heart ne'er
With verdure can again be spread;

Oh thou who mournest them that sleep,
Low lying in an earthy bed;

Look out on this reviving world,
And be new hopes within thee bred.

~~

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1866)
from Poems, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Richard Chenevix Trench biography

"The Seasons" by Trench, read by Sonia for LibriVox. Courtesy Rhodoclassics.

("Spring" begins at 1:27.)