August / Lizette Woodworth Reese

August

No wind, no bird. The river flames like brass.
On either side, smitten as with a spell
Of silence, brood the fields. In the deep grass,
Edging the dusty roads, lie as they fell
Handfuls of shriveled leaves from tree and bush.
But ’long the orchard fence and at the gate,
Thrusting their saffron torches through the hush,
Wild lilies blaze, and bees hum soon and late.
Rust-colored the tall straggling briar, not one
Rose left. The spider sets its loom up there
Close to the roots, and spins out in the sun
A silken web from twig to twig. The air
Is full of hot rank scents. Upon the hill
Drifts the noon’s single cloud, white, glaring, still.

~~
Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856-1935)
from A Handful of Lavender, 1891

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

Lizette Woordworth Reese biography

On the Road to the Sea / Charlotte Mew

On the Road to the Sea

We passed each other, turned and stopped for half an hour, then went our way,
     I who make other women smile did not make you –
But no man can move mountains in a day.
     So this hard thing is yet to do.

But first I want your life:– before I die I want to see
     The world that lies behind the strangeness of your eyes,
There is nothing gay or green there for my gathering, it may be,
          Yet on brown fields there lies
A haunting purple bloom: is there not something in grey skies
               And in grey sea?
          I want what world there is behind your eyes,
          I want your life and you will not give it me.

     Now, if I look, I see you walking down the years,
     Young, and through August fields – a face, a thought, a swinging dream perched on a stile;–
     I would have liked (so vile we are!) to have taught you tears
                But most to have made you smile.

     To-day is not enough or yesterday: God sees it all –
Your length on sunny lawns, the wakeful rainy nights;– tell me; –  (how vain to ask), but it is not a question – just a call;–
Show me then, only your notched inches climbing up the garden wall,
               I like you best when you are small.

          Is this a stupid thing to say
          Not having spent with you one day?
     No matter; I shall never touch your hair
     Or hear the little tick behind your breast,
          Still it is there,   
          And as a flying bird
     Brushes the branches where it may not rest
          I have brushed your hand and heard
     The child in you: I like that best.

So small, so dark, so sweet; and were you also then too grave and wise?
     Always I think. Then put your far off little hand in mine;–  Oh! let it rest;
I will not stare into the early world beyond the opening eyes,
     Or vex or scare what I love best.
          But I want your life before mine bleeds away –
               Here – not in heavenly hereafters – soon,–
               I want your smile this very afternoon,
          (The last of all my vices, pleasant people used to say,
               I wanted and I sometimes got – the Moon!)

               You know, at dusk, the last bird's cry,
          And round the house the flap of the bat's low flight,
               Trees that go black against the sky
          And then – how soon the night!

     No shadow of you on any bright road again,
And at the darkening end of this – what voice? whose kiss? As if you'd say!
It is not I who have walked with you, it will not be I who take away
     Peace, peace, my little handful of the gleaner's grain
     From your reaped fields at the shut of day.

               Peace! Would you not rather die
          Reeling, – with all the cannons at your ear?
                So, at least, would I,
          And I may not be here
          To-night, to-morrow morning or next year.
          Still I will let you keep your life a little while.
                    See dear?
               I have made you smile.

~~
Charlotte Mew (1869-1928)
from The Farmer's Bride, 1921

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

Charlotte Mew biography

By the Sea / Emily Dickinson

[656]

I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –

And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – upon the Sands –

But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Bodice – too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion's Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –

And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –

~~
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Emily Dickinson biography

2 poems / Sara Teasdale

"I Thought of You"

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
   And walking up the long beach all alone;
I heard the waves, breaking in measured thunder
   As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
   The cold and sparkling silver of the sea —
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
   Before you hear that sound again with me.


On the Dunes

If there is any life when death is over,
   These tawny beaches will know much of me,
I shall come back, as constant and as changeful
   As the unchanging, many-colored sea.

If life was small, if it has made me scornful,
   Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame
In the great calm of death, and if you want me
   Stand on the sea-ward dunes and call my name.

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

[Poems are in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Sara Teasdale biography

Beach Song / Pearl Andelson Sherry

Beach song

from From a Bay-window

What are they weaving under the water?
They make sheer laces and drag them down.
They ruffle a lawn with a great grieving.
What are they making — what manner of gown?

What are they weaving, caught here,    
Caught there, on the thin-washed blue?
Who is to be married or who is to be buried,
Under the water, under the water?

~~
Pearl Andelson Sherry (1899-1966)
from Poetry, December 1921

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

Pearl Andelson Sherry biography

By the Sea / Christina Rossetti

By the Sea

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

Sheer miracles of loveliness
Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed:
Anemones, salt, passionless,
Blow flower-like; just enough alive
To blow and multiply and thrive.

Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike,
Encrusted live things argus-eyed,
All fair alike, yet all unlike,
Are born without a pang, and die
Without a pang, and so pass by.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from Poems, 1890

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Christina Rossetti biography

The Wind Sleepers / H.D.

The Wind Sleepers

Whiter
than the crust
left by the tide,
we are stung by the hurled sand
and the broken shells.

We no longer sleep
in the wind —
we awoke and fled
through the city gate.

Tear —
tear us an altar,
tug at the cliff-boulders,
pile them with the rough stones —
we no longer
sleep in the wind,
propitiate us.

Chant in a wail
that never halts,
pace a circle and pay tribute
with a song.

When the roar of a dropped wave
breaks into it,
pour meted words
of sea-hawks and gulls
and sea-birds that cry
discords.

~~
H.D. (1886-1961)
from Sea Garden, 1916

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

H.D. biography

August / Dorothy Parker

August

When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;

Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.

~~
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
from Enough Rope, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Dorothy Parker biography

Break Break Break / Alfred Tennyson

Break Break Break

Break, break, break,
         On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
         The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
         That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
         That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
         To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
         And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break
         At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
         Will never come back to me.

~~
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), 1835
from Poems, 1842

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alfred Tennyson biography

Penny's Top 20 / July 2019

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

  1.  7/16/69, George J. Dance
  2.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  3.  Angel Standing in the Sun, AE Reiff

  4.  The Vast Hour, Genevieve Taggard
  5.  Poppies in July, Sylvia Plath
  6.  I Hear America Singing, Walt Whitman
  7.  'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight, Emily Brontë
  8.  Back Yard, Carl Sandburg
  9.  Canada, John Frushard Waddington
10.  Much in Little, Yvor Winters

11.  Full many a glorious morning have I seen, William Shakespeare
12.  I can remember, Stephan Pickering
13.  Lorelei's Song, Heinrich Heine
14.  Chaos in motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens
15.  Penny; or, Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
16.  The Breezes of June, Paul Hamilton Hayne
17.  Winter on the Zuyder Zee, Radclyffe Hall
18.  Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy
19.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud
20.  The Reader, Wallace Stevens

Source: Blogger, "Stats"