When icicles hang by the wall / William Shakespeare

From Love’s Labor ’s Lost, Act V. Sc. 2.

When icicles hang by the wall,
  And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
  And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,  
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
            Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,  
  And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
  And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,    
            To-whit;
To-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

~~
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
From Love's Labour's Lost (University Society, 1901)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Shakespeare biography

January / Rebecca Hey

January

Keen blows the bitter spirit of the North,
And, like a warrior foil'd, with powerless beam
The sun eyes wistfully the frost-bound stream,
As if he long'd, though vainly, to call forth
His by-gone strength, that he might deck the earth
In all her summer beauty, and set free
River and brooklet, till, towards the sea
Onward they bounded with melodious mirth.
But many a storm, ere that may be, shall blow,
And many a cloud frown darkling o'er the sky;
And be it so, if but affection's glow
Play round the lips, and brighten in the eye,
When round the hearth long-sever'd friends do meet,
(So ancient usage claims,) the opening to greet.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Rebecca Hey bibliography

Winter Heat / Will Dockery

Winter Heat

January sun
through the mist
blinding purity.

Summer breeze
down by the river
in dead of winter.

Ragged flight
of blackbirds
passing overhead,

peering down at me
on the border
looking up.

~~
Will Dockery, 2018
from Selected Poems, 1976-2019, 2019 

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

Minette Layne, Red-wing blackbird migration. 
Flickr Creative Commons. Courtesy Nature up North

Will Dockery biography

Winter Song / Elizabeth Tollet

Winter Song

Ask me no more, my truth to prove,
What I would suffer for my love.
With thee I would in exile go
To regions of eternal snow,
O’er floods by solid ice confined,
Through forest bare with northern wind:
While all around my eyes I cast,
Where all is wild and all is wast.
If there the timorous stag you chase,
Or rouse to fight a fiercer race,
Undaunted I thy arms would bear,
And give thy hand the hunter’s spear.
When the low sun withdraws his light,
And menaces an half-year’s night,
Thy conscious moon and stars above
Shall guide me with my wandering love.
Beneath the mountain’s hollow brow,
Or in its rocky cells below,
Thy rural feast I would provide,
Nor envy palaces their pride.
The softest moss should dress thy bed,
With savage spoils about thee spread:
While faithful love the watch should keep,
To banish danger from thy sleep.

~~
Elizabeth Tollet (1694-1754)
from Female Poets of Great Britain, 1848

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Elizabeth Tollet biography

Wind-blown / Muna Lee

from Songs of Many Moods

Wind-blown 

           I

  My heart
Rooted like the tree,
Like the tree reaches out yearning arms
Clutching at the wind.


           II

  Out of a universe of things
Two only
Give me any measure of peace:
Rain
That shuts you out,
And wind
That bears me away.


          III

  If for one hour,
One hour when the sunset is live gold,
I might be a little wind
Running with gray feet along the edge of the world,
Could I not forget
For one hour?

~~

Muna Lee (1895-1965)

from Poetry, August 1917

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

Muna Lee biography

So It Befell / Eda Lou Walton

So It Befell

When the day is long
And full of pain,
I remember
A certain little lane
Where every night,
At half-past seven,
The train flashed by
On its way to heaven.

There you and I,
Watching in the lane,
Dreamed of riding
Inside the train —
Away from the wide
Sun-flowered plain
And tall fields of
High rolling grain.

When night is long
And strangely sane,
I remember
A certain little lane,
Where, on one night —
So it befell —
The train passed heaven
On its way to hell.

~~
Eda Lou Walton (1894-1961)
from Poetry, August 1921

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

Eda Lou Walton biography

January, 1795 / Perdita

January, 1795

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing,
Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;
Titled gluttons dainties carving,
Genius in a garret starving.

Lofty mansions, warm and spacious;
Courtiers cringing and voracious;
Misers scarce the wretched heeding;
Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

Wives who laugh at passive spouses;
Theatres, and meeting-houses;
Balls, where simp’ring misses languish;
Hospitals, and groans of anguish.

Arts and sciences bewailing;
Commerce drooping, credit failing;
Placemen mocking subjects loyal;
Separations, weddings royal.

Authors who can’t earn a dinner;
Many a subtle rogue a winner;
Fugitives for shelter seeking;
Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking.

Taste and talents quite deserted;
All the laws of truth perverted;
Arrogance o’er merit soaring;
Merit silently deploring.

Ladies gambling night and morning;
Fools the works of genius scorning;
Ancient dames for girls mistaken,
Youthful damsels quite forsaken.

Some in luxury delighting;
More in talking than in fighting;
Lovers old, and beaux decrepid;
Lordlings empty and insipid.

Poets, painters, and musicians;
Lawyers, doctors, politicians:
Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes,
Seeking fame by diff’rent roads.

Gallant souls with empty purses;
Gen’rals only fit for nurses;
School-boys, smit with martial spirit,
Taking place of vet’ran merit.

Honest men who can’t get places,
Knaves who shew unblushing faces;
Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded;
Candor spurn’d, and art rewarded.

~~
Perdita  (Mary Robinson) (1758-1800)
from Poetical Works, 1824

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Perdita biography

You have to believe in happiness / Douglas Malloch

You have to believe in happiness

You have to believe in happiness,
Or happiness never comes.
I know that a bird chirps none the less
When all that he finds is crumbs.

     You have to believe the buds will blow,
     Believe in the grass in the days of snow.
     Ah, that’s the reason a bird can sing,
     On his darkest day he believes in Spring.

You have to believe in happiness —
It isn’t an outward thing.
The Spring never makes the song, I guess,
As much as the song the Spring.

     Aye, many a heart could find content
     If it saw the joy on the road it went,
     The joy ahead when it had to grieve,
     For the joy is there — but you have to believe.

~~
Douglas Malloch (1877-1938)

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Douglas Malloch biography

New Year on Dartmoor / Sylvia Plath

New Year on Dartmoor

This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you
Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There's no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.

~~
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963}, 1962
from Collected Poems, 1981

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Sylvia Plath biography

Penny's Top 20 / December 2019

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

  1.  You went away in summertime, F.O. Call
  2.  All Souls' Night, Frances Cornford

  3.  Coin of the Year, Clement Wood

  4.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  5.  Heaven's Man, AE Reiff
  6.  After Rain, Edward Thomas
  7.  Demons, George J. Dance
  8.  A Christmas Carol, Aubrey de Vere
  9.  An Autumnal Thought, Robert Story
10.  Dust of Snow, Robert Frost

11.  December, Rebecca Hey
12.  On December 21, Amos Russel Wells
13.  Blizzard, William Carlos Williams
14.  December Days, Caleb Prentiss
15.  To-night ungather'd let us leave, Alfred Tennyson
16.  The Shortest Day, Mary Devenport O'Neill
17.  News, AE Reiff
18.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
19.  An October Nocturne, Yvor Winters

20. Raglan Road, Patrick Kavanagh

Source: Blogger, "Stats"