My Lady of the Sonnets, one word more / Robert Norwood

XXX

My Lady of the Sonnets, one word more,
The last; and, after, let the silence fall.
Our year is ended, and things great and small
Glow with its glory; could we live it o'er,
What would we scatter from its precious store
Of pearl, chalcedony, and topaz — all
The many-jewelled moments that we call
Love's treasure — we who had not loved before!
Into that treasure plunge we both our hands,
The while we laugh, and love, and live again.
What rainbow-splendours and what golden sands
Fall from our fingers! . . . Now let come the pain
And steal the shadow, moan the wintry sea;
Locked is the casket: in your hands the key!

~~
Robert Norwood (1874-1932)
from His Lady of the Sonnets, 1915

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

Robert Norwood biography

December Days / Caleb Prentiss

December Days

Ruthless winter's rude career
Comes to close the parting year;
Fleecy flakes of snow descend,
Boreal winds the welkin rend.
Reflect, oh man! and well remember
That dull old age is dark December;
For soon the year of life is gone,
When hoary hairs like snow come on.

~~
Caleb Prentiss (1771-1838)
from History of Paris, Maine, 1884

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Caleb Prentiss biography

December / Rebecca Hey

December

As human life begins and ends with woe,
So doth the year with darkness and with storm.
Mute is each sound, and vanish'd each fair form
That wont to cheer us; yet a sacred glow —
A moral beauty,— to which Autumn's show,
Or Spring's sweet blandishments, or Summer's bloom,
Are but vain pageants,— mitigate the gloom,
What time December's angry tempests blow.
'Twas when the "Earth had doff'd her gaudy trim,
As if in awe," that she received her Lord;
And angels jubilant attuned the hymn
Which the church echoes still in sweet accord,
And ever shall, while Time his course doth fill,
'Glory to God on high! on earth, peace and good will!'

~~
Rebecca Hey

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Rebecca Hey bibliography

Heaven's Man / AE Reiff

Heaven’s Man

Who then first found the cosmos in a man,

Divided minutes of his arc, set axis?

If man be heaven's, then heaven is for man,

And this his truth, how big the universe.

He is no sun that planets orb and orb,

Or like the moon, his body old and dead,

Nor is he earth, that planet swirling through

His sphere, or other, Mars or Jupiter.

What is man that heaven admired him,

Or sons of men to be so greeting them?

Creating heaven with a touch, his fingers,

God gave to man dominion of his hands.

In all the world and worlds beyond oh Lord,

I seek to serve you and to know your word.

~~
AE Reiff, 2019

from The True Light that Lights, 2020

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]

AE Reiff biography

A Christmas Carol / Aubrey de Vere

A Christmas Carol

They leave the land of gems and gold,
    The shining portals of the East;
For Him, the woman's Seed foretold,
    They leave the revel and the feast.

To earth their sceptres they have cast,
    And crowns by kings ancestral worn;
They track the lonely Syrian waste;
    They kneel before the Babe new born.

O happy eyes that saw Him first;
    O happy lips that kissed His feet:
Earth slakes at last her ancient thirst;
    With Eden's joy her pulses beat.

True kings are those who thus forsake
    Their kingdoms for the Eternal King;
Serpent, her foot is on thy neck;
    Herod, thou writhest, but canst not sting.

He, He is King, and He alone
    Who lifts that infant hand to bless;
Who makes His mother's knee His throne,
    Yet rules the starry wilderness.

~~

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814-1902)

from Christmas: Its origin, celebration and significance as related in prose and verse, 1907

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Aubrey Thomas de Vere biography

To-night ungather'd let us leave / Alfred Tennyson

CIV

To-night ungather'd let us leave
     This laurel, let this holly stand:
     We live within the stranger's land,
And strangely falls our Christmas eve.

Our father's dust is left alone
     And silent under other snows:
     There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.

No more shall wayward grief abuse
     The genial hour with mask and mime;
     For change of place, like growth of time,
Has' broke the bond of dying use.

Let cares that petty shadows cast,
     By which our lives are chiefly proved,
     A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.

But let no footstep beat the floor,
     Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
     For who would keep an ancient form
Thro' which the spirit breathes no more?

Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
     Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown;
     No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east

Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
     Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
     Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.

~~
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
from In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alfred Tennyson biography

The Shortest Day / Mary Devenport O'Neill

The Shortest Day

This is the shortest day,
‘Tis afternoon;
Warm with the fire I’ve loitered out to see
A pale wet mist
Hiding a yellow moon,
A bunch of jingling stares
Thickening the top of a bare Winter tree.

~~
Mary Devenport O'Neill (1879-1967)
from Prometheus, and other poems, 1929

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Bert Kaufmann, Misty Winter Afternoon, Anselt, Netherlands, 2010. 

CC BY, Wikimedia Commns

Mary Devenport O'Neill biography

On December 21 / Amos Russel Wells

On December 21

Now let the weather do its worst,
With frost and sleet and blowing,
Rage like a bedlam wild and curst,
And have its fill of snowing.
Now let the ice in savage vise
Grip meadow, brook, and branches,
Down from the north pour winter forth
In roaring avalanches.

I turn my collar to the blast
And greet the storm with laughter:
Your day, old Winter! use it fast,
For Spring is coming after.
The world may wear a frigid air,
But ah! its heart is burning;
Soon, soon will May dance down this way:
The year is at the turning.

There's not a sabre-charge of cold
But brings the blossoms nearer;
By every frost-flower we shall hold
The violets the dearer.
So rage and hlow the drifting snow
And have your fill of sorrow:
The turning years bring smiles for tears;
We'll greet the spring to-morrow!

~~
Amos Russel Wells (1862-1933)
from Collected Poems, 1921

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

Amos Russel Wells biography

Dust of Snow / Robert Frost

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

~~
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
from New Hampshire, 1923

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

"Dust of Snow," performed by HamletTheMonkey (Guild of Thespian Puppets)

Robert Frost biography

Blizzard / William Carlos Williams

Blizzard

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

~~

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), 1920

from Sour Grapes, 1921

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

William Carlos Williams biography

An Autumnal Thought / Robert Story

An Autumnal Thought

It is most meet and natural the sigh
Man heaves, when autumn's winds come wild and drear,
When the last lingering blossoms droop and die,
And whirl the shrivelled blossoms red and sear.
Returning spring, indeed, shall deck the year
With flowers and foliage rich as e'er she gave;
But these shall never, never re-appear!
These never more in gales of summer wave,
Adorn the woodland path, or scent the mountain cave.

All things are mutable. The strain we heard
In yon deep dell, is silent now — and May
Shall wake another strain, another bird;
Dead is the former tenant of the spray—
Gone with the leaves and flowers that green and gay
Concealed their songster! Yet fond man believes
The world of yesterday the same to-day;
And when he grieves at all, he only grieves
That in their blight his own he feelingly perceives.

Yet their blight is not his. They rise no more:
But man shall rise triumphant from the tomb!
The judgment-morn shall once again restore
The human-flowers death blighted — to resume
In fairer climes far more than former bloom!
And that high bloom no future blight shall fear,
But flourish still where heaven's own beams illume,
And dews supernal water it! No tear
Shall stain the happy cheek in that eternal year!

~~
Robert Story (1795-1860)
from Newcastle Magazine, December 1829

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Robert Story biography

You went away in summertime / F.O. Call

You went away in summertime 

You went away in summertime
When leaves and flowers were young,
And birds still lingered in the fields
With many songs unsung.

Tm glad it was in summertime
When skies were clear and blue,
I could not say good-bye to you
And bear the winter too.

~~

F.O. Call (1878-1956)

from Acanthus and Wild Grape, 1920

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

Marcus Stone, The Parting by the River, 1865. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

F.O. Call biography

After Rain / Edward Thomas

After Rain

The rain of a night and a day and a night
Stops at the light
Of this pale choked day. The peering sun
Sees what has been done.
The road under the trees has a border new
Of purple hue
Inside the border of bright thin grass:
For all that has
Been left by November of leaves is torn
From hazel and thorn
And the greater trees. Throughout the copse
No dead leaf drops
On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern,
At the wind's return:
The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed
Are thinly spread
In the road, like little black fish, inlaid,
As if they played.
What hangs from the myriad branches down there
So hard and bare
Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see
On one crab-tree.
And on each twig of every tree in the dell
Uncountable
Crystals both dark and bright of the rain
That begins again.     

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Last Poems, 1918

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

Edward Thomas biography

Penny's Top 20 / November 2019

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

  1.  1915: The Trenches, Conrad Aiken
  2.  Raglan Road, Patrick Kavanagh

  3.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  4.  All Souls' Night, Frances Cornford
  5.  Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens
  6.  Autumn, Christopher Brennan
  7.  November, Marorie Allen Seiffert
  8.  Coin of the Year, Clement Wood
  9.  Demons, George J. Dance
10.  Lunar Paraphrase, Wallace Stevens

11.   November, Robert Bridges
12.  The Blue Heron, Theodore Goodridge Roberts
13.  Winter Solitude, Archibald Lampman
14.  Jonah, AE Reiff
15.  Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy
16.  All Hallow's Night, Lizette Woodworth Reese
17.  The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff
18.  Once Like a Light, AE Reiff
19.  News, AE Reiff

20. New Year's Morning, Helen Hunt Jackson

Source: Blogger, "Stats"