February Twilight / Sara Teasdale

February Twilight

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see –
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Dark of the Moon, 1926

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

Sara Teasdale biography

Self-Criticism in February / Robinson Jeffers

Self-Criticism in February

The bay is not blue but sombre yellow
With wrack from the battered valley, it is speckled with violent foam heads
And tiger-striped with long lovely storm-shadows.
You love this better than the other mask; better eyes than yours
Would feel the equal beauty of the blue.
It is certain you have loved the beauty of storm disproportionately.
But the present time is not pastoral, but founded
On violence, pointed for more massive violence: perhaps it is not
Perversity but need that perceives the storm-beauty.
Well, bite on this: your poems are too full of ghosts and demons,
And people like phantoms – how often life's are –
And passion so strained that the clay mouths go praying for destruction –
Alas, it is not unusual in life;
To every soul at some time. But why insist on it? And now
For the worst fault: you have never mistaken
Demon nor passion nor idealism for the real God.
Then what is most disliked in those verses
Remains most true. Unfortunately. If only you could sing
That God is love, or perhaps that social
Justice will prevail. I can tell lies in prose.

~~
Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
from Such Counsels You Gave to Me, and other poems, 1937 

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Robinson Jeffers biography

Riding on the Ice upon Lake Champlain / Thomas Rowley

Riding on the Ice upon Lake Champlain

The water deep is fast asleep
Beneath this icy band,
So we can pass upon her face,
As on solid land.

When Sol displays his warmer rays
And leaves his southern house,
He'll penetrate this icy plate
And set the water loose.

To our surprise the winds arise
And put it all in motion;
Here waves will run as they have done
On the Atlantic ocean.

The mighty hand that formed the land
And set the seas their bound,
He at his will can hush it still,
As is the solid ground.

Then Boreas sends his freezing winds
Upon our Lake Champlain,
Whose dreadful frost will bind her fast –
So we may ride again.

~~
Thomas Rowley (1721-1796) 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Rowley biography

Chloris in the Snow / William Strode

Chloris in the Snow

I saw fair Chloris walk alone,
When feather'd rain came softly down,
As Jove descending from his Tower
To court her in a silver shower:
The wanton snow flew to her breast,
Like pretty birds into their nest,
But, overcome with whiteness there,
For grief it thaw'd into a tear:
    Thence falling on her garments' hem,
    To deck her, froze into a gem.

~~
William Strode (1600-1645) 
from the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, 1900

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Strode biography

How Do I Love Thee? / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from Sonnets from the Portuguese

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

~~

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

from Poems, 1856

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Elizabeth Barrett Browning biography
Valentine's Day on The Penny Blog

Snow / Archibald Lampman

Snow

White are the far-off plains, and white
    The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
    And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
    Falls down scarce audibly.

The road before me smooths and fills
    Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
    Are blotted slowly out;      
The naked trees loom spectrally
    Into the dim white sky.

The meadows and far-sheeted streams
    Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
    The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
    A silence everywhere.

Save when at lonely intervals
    Some farmer’s sleigh, urged on,  
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
    Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
    A sound remote and clear;

The barking of a dog, or call
    To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
    Or barnyard far a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
    Falls, settling soft and slow.  

The evening deepens, and the gray
    Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
    Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,  
    Plod dumbly on, and dream.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Lyrics of Earth, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

Winter / Raymond Holden

Winter

Drowsily, dreamily, the brown boughs
Mingle and murmur in the breeze
And the little animals drowse
And I wonder they do not freeze,
For nothing moves but is shrill
With the Winter s clinking song
And the snow lies deep and the hill
Gleams where the gusts are strong.
I have come down from the house
Which rests on the reaching snow
To the music of murmuring boughs
In the footless world I know,
And to me the cold is a voice
From earth that would speak to me
And urge me not to rejoice
That I am not beast nor tree;
And to me the warmth of my blood
Is an answer saying, "I hear,"
And so we are understood
And so we have nothing to fear
Though I am a man who dies
And the earth is like dust in the skies.

~~

Raymond Holden (1894-1972)

from Granite and Alabaster, 1922

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

Raymond Holden biography

There's a certain slant of light / Emily Dickinson

There's a certain slant of light 

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,–
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 'tis like the distance
On the look of death.

~~
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
from Poems, 1890-1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Emily Dickinson biography

After Tea / F.O. Call

After Tea

See how the aged trembling hands of Day
Spill over the white cloth and tea-cups blue,
Red wine from his last goblet poured away;
So let me by the window sit with you,
And watch the sun drop down behind the trees,
Or gleam across the snow — a crimson bar;
For in still, mystic moments such as these
Down unknown by-ways we may wander far.
The crimson turns to purple on the snow,
The orange sky grown gray, and glimmering lights
Of scattered star-lamps through the darkness glow
But neither Night nor Death my soul affrights.
    For clear there gleams, all earthly dark above.
    The ever-burning star-lamp of your love.

~~

F.O. Call (1878-1956)

from Acanthus and Wild Grape, 1920

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

F.O. Call biography

Penny's Top 20 / January 2019

Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in January 2019:

  1.  An Old Man's Winter Night, Robert Frost
  2.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3.  New Year's Morning, Helen Hunt Jackson
  4.  January Morning, William Carlos Williams
  5.  January, E. Nesbit
  6.  The Frosted Pane, Charles G.D. Roberts
  7.  Winter Solitude, Archibald Lampman
  8.  The Wintry Day, Perdita
  9.  January Morning, Michael Strange
10.  Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens

11.  January, Cornelius Webbe
12.  Cease Fire, George J. Dance
13.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme
14.  A Winter's Tale, D.H. Lawrence
15.  Winter: A Dirge, Robert Burns
16.  The Blue Heron, Theodore Goodridge Roberts
17.  She Sleeps Tight, Will Dockery
18.  To the Swimmer, Countee Cullen
19.  The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
20.  Twice a week the winter thorough, A.E. Housman

Source: Blogger, "Stats"

Penny's Top 100 of 2018

The 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2018:

  1. Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  2. The Conjurer, George J. Dance
  3. The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
  4. The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff
  5. The Reader, Wallace Stevens

  6. Daysleepers, George J. Dance
  7. Penny (or Penny's Hat), George J. Dance
  8. Twice a week the winter thorough, A.E. Housman
  9. Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy
10. May, W.M.W. Call

11. Three Thousand Miles, Louis MacNeice
12. To the Sea Angel, Will Dockery
13. A January Dandelion, George Marion McClellan
14. The Ocean, Nathaniel Hawthorne
15. Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

16. Breeze, Ilya Shambat
17. A Wish, Margaret Veley
18. Renaissance, A.G. Stephens
19. When the World is Burning, Ebenezer Jones
20. Each tree did boast the wished springtimes pride, Tom Watson

21. Autumn, T.E. Hulme
22. April, Katharine Tynan
23. Spring-Time, Ernest Radford
24. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
25. Leafless April, Ethelwyn Wetherald

26. Puella Parvula, Wallace Stevens
27. Tardy Spring, George Meredith
28. The Brook in February, Charles G.D. Roberts
29. As imperceptibly as grief, Emily Dickinson
30. April, G.A. Studdert Kennedy

31. Rock Me to Sleep, Elizabeth Akers Allen
32. In Flanders Fields, John McCrae
33. The Diver, W.W.E. Ross
34. O moon, large golden summer moon, Mathilde Blind
35. Easter Song, Francis Sherman

36. There Will Come Soft Rains, Sara Teasdale
37. Wonderful World, William Brighty Rands
38. Inniskeen Road: July Evening, Patrick Kavanagh
39. Card Game, Frank Prewitt
40. A Song for New Year's Eve, William Cullen Bryant

41. Because, one night, my soul reached out, Govinda Krishna Chettur
42. Written at the Close of Spring, Charlotte Smith
43. April, Ralph Waldo Emerson
44. The First Snow-Fall, James Russell Lowell
45. Song of the Ski, Wilson MacDonald

46. April, William Carlos Williams
47. Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin
48. Summer 1924, Mary Devenport O'Neill
49. Season's End, Raymond Holden
50. Cease Fire, George J. Dance

51. A Holiday, Ella Wheeler Wilcox
52. Lunar Baedeker, Mina Loy
53. January, Hillaire Belloc
54. Cuckoo Song
55. The Sower, Charles G.D. Roberts

56. The New Year, Emma Lazarus
57. Advice to a Butterfly, Maxwell Bodenheim
58. I love to see the summer beaming forth, John Clare
59. One Day in Autumn, David Morton
60. The Canadian Rossignol (in May), E.W. Thomson

61. Green Boughs, Frank Pearce Sturm
62. A Summer's Night, Paul Laurence Dunbar
63. February, William Morris
64. The Lute-Player, Frank Pearce Sturm
65. August, E. Nesbit

66. Christ Walks in this Infernal District, Too, Malcolm Lowry
67. Snow, Raymond Holden
68. The Green Door, C.F. MacIntyre
69. Insanity, Maxwell Bodenheim
70. Heart Winter, James Lewis Milligan

71. The Pool, Marjorie Pickthall
72. Lines (When youthful faith has fled), John Gibson Lockhart
73. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
74. Heat, H.D.
75. June Apples, Ethelwyn Wetherald

76. A Summer Night, Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
77. When Summer Comes, Sophia Almon Hensley
78. April Weather, Edith Wyatt
79. Spring's Immortality, Mackenzie Bell
80. Lana Turner has collapsed!, Frank O'Hara

81. The Parterre, E.H. Palmer
82. Waking in Winter, Sylvia Plath
83. A Day in Spring (I-II), Richard Westall
84. Summer Night, Langston Hughes
85. To the Moon, Percy Bysshe Shelley

86. Unwelcome, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
87. The Pulse of Spring, Mark Turbyfill
88. September, Ethelwyn Wetherald
89. Tripping down the field-path, Charles Swain
90. January, Folgore de San Geminiano

91. Sea Gulls, Jeanette Marks
92. After Summer, Philip Bourke Marston
93. The Autumn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
94. August, Algernon Charles Swinburne
95. To Spring, Robert Story

96. An Ode of the Birth of our Saviour, Robert Herrick
97. Immoral, James Oppenheim
98. Winter Night, John Reed
99. Autumn, Frances Browne
100 little tree, E.E. Cummings


Source: Blogger, "Stats"