Horatian Ode 1.9 / Charles Stuart Calverley

Ode 1.9 

 One dazzling mass of solid snow
     Soracte stands; the bent woods fret
     Beneath their load; and, sharpest-set
With frost, the streams have ceased to flow.

Pile on great faggots and break up
    The ice: let influence more benign
    Enter with four-years-treasured wine,
Fetched in the ponderous Sabine cup:

Leave to the Gods all else. When they
    Have once bid rest the winds that war
    Over the passionate seas, no more
Grey ash and cypress rock and sway.

Ask not what future suns shall bring,
    Count to-day gain, whate'er it chance
    To be: nor, young man, scorn the dance,
Nor deem sweet Love an idle thing,

Ere Time thy April youth hath changed
    To sourness. Park and public walk
    Attract thee now, and whispered talk
At twilight meetings pre-arranged;

Hear now the pretty laugh that tells
    In what dim corner lurks thy love;
    And snatch a bracelet or a glove
From wrist or hand that scarce rebels.

~~~
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) (65 B.C - 8 B.C.)
translated by Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884)
from Verses and Translations, 1862

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

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The cold earth slept below / Percy Bysshe Shelley

Lines (The cold earth slept below)

The cold earth slept below;
         Above the cold sky shone;
                 And all around,
                 With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
                 Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black;
          The green grass was not seen;
                 The birds did rest
                 On the bare thorn’s breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
                 Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glow’d in the glare
          Of the moon’s dying light;
                 As a fen-fire’s beam
                 On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly — so the moon shone there,
And it yellow’d the strings of thy tangled hair,
                 That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
          The wind made thy bosom chill;
                 The night did shed
                 On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
                 Might visit thee at will.

 ~~~
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
from The Literary Pocket-Book, 1818.

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Percy Bysshe Shelley biography

A Winter's Tale / D.H. Lawrence

A Winter's Tale

Yesterday the fields were only gray with scattered snow,
And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go
On towards the pines at the hill's white verge.

I cannot see her, since the mist's pale scarf
Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;
But she's waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half
Sobs struggling in to her frosty sigh.

When does she come so promptly, when she must know
She's only the nearer to the inevitable farewell?
The hill is steep, on the slope my steps are slow —
Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?

~~
D.H. Lawrence
from Amores, 1916

[All rights reserved by the author's estate - Please do not copy]

D.H. Lawrence biography

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (1-10)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

  1. Penny (or Penny's Hat), George Dance
  2. Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3. Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Wallace Stevens
  4. Lorelei's Song / Das Loreleylied, Heinrich Heine
  5. Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy

  6. Ganesha Girl on Rankin, Will Dockery
  7. Mars & Avril, George Dance
  8. Romance Novel / Roman, Arthur Rimbaud
  9. Lucky Penny, George Dance
10. The Man with the Blue Guitar, Wallace Stevens

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (11-20)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

11. Daily News, George Dance
12. Red Lipped Stranger, Will Dockery
13. Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens
14. Songs, Demonspawn
15. Winter Love, George Dance

16. Chun Wang / Spring Scene, Tu Fu
17. A Sonnet of the Moon, Charles Best
18. Landscape in 2 Colours / Paysage en 2 couleurs, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
19. Autumn Song, George Dance
20. Men Made Out of Words, Wallace Stevens

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (21-30)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

21. Vowels / Voyelles, Arthur Rimbaud
22. Angel's Song
23. Portrait, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
24. November, F.W. Harvey
25. September Night, George Dance

26. Velvet Shoes, Elinor Wylie
27. Bird Cage / Cage d'oiseau, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
28. The Playing / Le jeu, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
29. Sonnet. The Token, John Donne
30. A Villlanelle is Difficult to Write, Hieronymous707

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (31-40)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

31. A Light exists in Spring, Emily Dickinson
32. Accompaniment / Accompagnement, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
33. In the Bleak Mid-winter, Christina Rossetti
34. Petit the Poet, Edgar Lee Masters
35. A Scroll, George Dance

36. Improvisations on the Flute, Marjorie Pickthall
37. Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens
38. March, George Dance
39. The Huron Carol, trans. J. Edgar Middleton
40. Elixir (Dance Mix), Crystal Matteau & George Dance

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (41-50)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

41. For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon
42. Impression: Le Reveillon, Oscar Wilde
43. Mannequin in a Mirror, Matt E. and George Dance
44. Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself, Wallace Stevens
45. August Night, Sara Teasdale

46. The New England Boy's Song About Thanksgiving Day, Lydia Maria Child
47. Wheat Field Concerts
48. Icicle Drops, Arthur Lockhart
49. The Children, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
50. June, George Dance

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (51-60)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

51. Song (Man's a poor deluded bubble),  Robert Dodsley
52. Winter Uplands, Archibald Lampman
53. Once, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
54. how far away it was, ray heinrich
55. The Sky is low, Emily Dickinson

56. On the Grasshopper and Cricket, John Keats
57. Wind and Silver, Amy Lowell
58. Stonewalled Meteor, Rusty Taylor
59. Heat in the City, Archibald Lampman
60. The Bridge at Flatline

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (61-70)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

61. Winter Nightfall, Robert Bridges
62. Stony Lake, Katherine Hale
63. Departure, Edna St. Vincent Millay
64. Orbits
65. Minor Apocalypse, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

66. There is a Garden in Her Face, Thomas Campion
67. She Walks in Beauty, Lord Byron
68. The Starlit Night, Gerard Manley Hopkins
69. Oxford Cheese Ode, James McIntyre
70. When You Are Old, W.B. Yeats

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (71-80)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

71. To My Mother, Thomas Moore
72. Solitude Surrounded, AE Reiff
73. When Yon Full Moon, W.H. Davies
74. Among the Rocks, Robert Browning
75. The Blue Heron, Theodore Goodridge Roberts

76. The Modern Politician, Archibald Lampman
77. The Old Year, John Clare
78. The March of the Dead, Robert W. Service
79. The Garden, Sara Teasdale
80. Christmas Sonnet, E.A. Woodward

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (81-90)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2010:

81. Winter Field, A.E. Coppard
82. The Dove of New Snow, Vachel Lindsay
83. I Am Not Yours, Sara Teasdale
84. Remembering Ishtar (1929), Ivan McNeil
85. Let No Charitable Hope, Elinor Wylie

86. Christmas Carol, Sara Teasdale
87. A Fading of the Sun, Wallace Stevens
88. The stars are glittering in the frosty sky, Charles Heavysege
89. A Madrigal, Jane Elizabeth MacDonald
90. To Daffodils, Robert Herrick

Penny's Top 100 of 2011 (91-100)

From Penny's Top 100: the 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2011:

91. Snow on the East Wind, Edward Plunkett
92. Beautiful Old Age, D.H. Lawrence
93. How He Died, Ernest Howard Crosby
94. A January Morning, Archibald Lampman
95. The Dark Hills, Edward Arlington Robinson

96. The Great Matter, Obsidian Eagle
97. The Skaters, John Gould Fletcher
98. Penny's OS, George Dance
99. Moonlight and Common Day, Louise Morey Bowen
100. A Moth Danced

The Year / Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Year

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of the year.

~~
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
from Poems of Cheer, 1914

[Poem is in the public domain]

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