The brooding hours, through the dull afternoon,
Pause, while a torrid sun flames in the sky.
(O heart of mine, dream of a long, cool dune,
Where breezes wander by!)
Hemmed in by granite walls, the very paves
Grow worn and weary with the ceaseless heat.
(O heart, dream of a shore where foam-flecked waves
Surge, crash, and wildly beat!)
The sad hours creep toward the dim light of dusk
Ah! how each laggard moment slowly goes!
(O heart, dream of a garden filled with musk
And the sweet scent of rose!)
The sun goes down at last, and lo! a breeze
Pours through the mighty cavern of the streets.
(O sleeping heart, dream of unsheltered seas
Where the glad, fresh rain beats!)
~~ Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949) from The Quiet Singer, and other poems, 1908
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Beside the Sea, upon the strand
The sun is hot, the day is grand:
I think you will agree with me,
Upon the shore 'tis nice to be,
Amid the shingle and the sand.
Your hands get brown, your face is tanned,
You bathe or noddle to the band;
Or slowly ride a solemn "gee"
Beside the Sea.
You pace the pier, you idle and
The offing never leave unscanned:
And study, 'neath some grateful lee,
The "blue, the fresh, the ever free"!
The air is pure, your lungs expand,
Beside the Sea!
~~
J. Ashby-Sterry (1836-1917)
from The Lazy Minstrel, 1886 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
Sometimes when fragrant summer dusk comes in with scent of rose and musk
And scatters from their sable husk the stars like yellow grain,
Oh then the ancient longing comes that lures me like a roll of drums
To follow where the cricket strums his banjo in the lane.
And when the August moon comes up and like a shallow silver cup
Pours out upon the fields and roads her amber-colored beams,
A leafy whisper mounts and calls from out the forest’s moss-grown halls
To leave the city’s somber walls and take the road of dreams.
A call that bids me rise and strip, and naked all from toe to lip
To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees,
And where the hairly spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin,
And out to where the fields begin, like down upon the breeze.
Into a silver pool to plunge, and like a great trout wheel and lunge
Among the lily bonnets and the stars reflected there;
With face upturned to lie afloat, with moonbeams rippling round my throat,
And from the slimy grasses plait a chaplet for my hair.
Then, leaping from my rustic bath, to take some winding meadow-path;
Across the fields of aftermath to run with flying feet,
And feel the dewdrop-weighted grass that bends beneath me as I pass,
Where solemn trees in shadowy mass beyond the highway meet.
And, plunging deep within the woods, among the leaf-hung solitudes
Where scarce one timid star intrudes into the breathless gloom,
Go leaping down some fern-hid way to scare the rabbits in their play,
And see the owl, a phantom gray, drift by on silent plume.
To fling me down at length and rest upon some damp and mossy nest,
And hear the choir of surpliced frogs strike up a bubbling tune;
And watch, above the dreaming trees, Orion and the Hyades
And all the stars, like golden bees around the lily-moon.
. . . . . . . . .
Then who can say if I have gone a-gipsying from dusk till dawn
In company with fay and faun, where firefly-lanterns gleam?
And have I danced on cobwebs thin to Master Locust’s mandolin —
Or have I spent the night in bed, and was it all a dream?
~~ Victor Starbuck (1887-1935) from Poetry, August 1916
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the Soviet Union]
in the absolute heat,
in the shadows of trees,
of empty houses,
this silence built from soft breezes,
from freeway traffic on the
other side of the river
this moment defined by
sunlight on chrome
by the absence of all pain
spend your lifetime buried
beneath belief and the loss of
faith becomes inevitable
dig at your flesh to try and
find the better person buried
down deep inside and all you do
is bleed
I would I were the glow-worm, thou the flower,
That I might fill thy cup with glimmering light;
I would I were the bird, and thou the bower,
To sing thee songs throughout the summer night.
I would I were a pine tree deeply rooted,
And thou the lofty, cloud-beleaguered rock,
Still, while the blasts of heaven around us hooted,
To cleave to thee and weather every shock.
I would I were the rill, and thou the river;
So might I, leaping from some headlong steep,
With all my waters lost in thine for ever,
Be hurried onwards to the unfathomed deep.
I would – what would I not? O foolish dreaming!
My words are but as leaves by autumn shed,
That, in the faded moonlight idly gleaming,
Drop on the grave where all our love lies dead.
~~ Mathilde Blind (1841-1896) from Songs and Sonnets, 1893
As starry seas are caught up into clouds
To whirl Earth's sphere throughout all time,
Through space and out, where rising in a shroud
They roll the bright extensive will to find
Their will to fall again in showers, so crowds
Descending off the wheel give misty signs
Of life, and sons of Elohim who bow
From out the sky, concentrated and blind
In all their beams, then enter creation.
As though one could with the word written
In earth's center in the matter of its making,
As earth's heart was into pieces breaking,
Come into the body. Then wars should cease,
And earth, all surface, sky and core, find peace.
