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Saturday, February 29, 2020

February / Folgore de San Geminiano


February

In February I give you gallant sport
    Of harts and hinds and great wild boars; and all
    Your company good foresters and tall,
With buskins strong, with jerkins close and short;
And in your leashes, hounds of brave report;
    And from your purses, plenteous money-fall,
    In very spleen of misers' starveling gall,
Who at your generous customs snarl and snort.
At dusk wend homeward, ye and all your folk
    All laden from the wilds, to your carouse,
        With merriment and songs accompanied:
And so draw wine and let the kitchen smoke;
    And so be till the first watch glorious;
        Then sound sleep to you till the day be wide.

~~
Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Sunday, February 23, 2020

February / Rebecca Hey


February

Though Winter still asserts his right to reign,
He sways his sceptre now with gentler hand;
Nay, sometimes softens to a zephyr bland
The hurrying blast, which erst along the plain
Drove the skin-piercing sleet and pelting rain
In headlong rage; while, ever and anon,
He draws aside his veil of vapours dun,
That the bright sun may smile on us again.
To-day 'twould seem (so soft the west wind's sigh)
That the mild spirit of the infant Spring
Was brooding o'er the spots where hidden lie
Such early flowers as are the first to fling
On earth's green lap their wreaths of various dye —
Flowers, round whose forms sweet hopes and sweeter memories cling.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Rebecca Hey bibliography

Saturday, February 22, 2020

Winter Memories / Henry David Thoreau


Winter Memories

Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,—
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the johnswort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb,
Its own memorial,— purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow:—
So by God's cheap economy made rich,
To go upon my winter's task again.

~~
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
from Poems of Nature, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry David Thoreau biography

Sunday, February 16, 2020

A Winter Bluejay / Sara Teasdale


A Winter Bluejay

Crisply the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstasy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstasy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstasy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.
Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
“Oh look!”
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Rivers to the Sea, 1915

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

Sara Teasdale biography

Saturday, February 15, 2020

Songs to Joannes XIII / Mina Loy

from Songs to Joannes

XIII

Come to me   There is something
I have got to tell you   and I can't tell
Something taking shape
Something has a new name
A new dimension
A new use
A new illusion

It is ambient              And it is in your eyes
Something shiny       Something only for you
                                      Something that I must not see

It is in my ears           Something very resonant
Something that you must not hear
                                      Something only for me

Let us be very jealous
Very suspicious
Very conservative
Very cruel
Or we might not make an end of the jostling aspirations
Disorb inviolate egos

Where two or three are welded together
They shall become god
— — — — — — —
Oh that's right
Keep away from me   Please give me a push
Don't let me understand you   Don't realize me
Or we might tumble together
Depersonalized
Identical
Into the terrific Nirvana
Me you — you — me

~~ 
Mina Loy (1882-1966)
from Others, April 1917

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

Friday, February 14, 2020

Love's Philosophy / Percy Bysshe Shelley


Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
   And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
   With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
   All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
   Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven
   And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
   If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
   And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
   If thou kiss not me?

~~
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), 1819
from Posthumous Poems, 1824

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Percy Bysshe Shelley biography

"Love's Philosophy" read by Iain Batchelor. Courtesy Live Canon Poetry.

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Winter Poetry / Gladys Cromwell


Winter Poetry

Lovers think that they alone possess
A sense of beauty. They ascribe all graces
To their love; seeing earth's wintry places
Warmed and enchanted, they suppose and guess
Their own illusion makes the loveliness.
They dream their flame illumines the dim spaces
Of the sky; they think the earth embraces
No charm but that their pleasure can express.
Yet we, who shun romance, find beauty near;
A stillness in the air when summer's gone;
On the fine winter stem hang subtle fruits;
We like to see the slender willow spear;
We like red weeds and branches blackly drawn,
And the white snow embroidered with brown roots.

~~
Gladys Cromwell (1885-1919)
from Poems, 1919

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

Gladys Cromwell biography

Saturday, February 8, 2020

A Winter's Tale / Dylan Thomas


A Winter's Tale

It is a winter's tale
That the snow blind twilight ferries over the lakes
And floating fields from the farm in the cup of the vales,
Gliding windless through the hand folded flakes,
The pale breath of cattle at the stealthy sail,

And the stars falling cold,
And the smell of hay in the snow, and the far owl
Warning among the folds, and the frozen hold
Flocked with the sheep white smoke of the farm house cowl
In the river wended vales where the tale was told.

Once when the world turned old
On a star of faith pure as the drifting bread,
As the food and flames of the snow, a man unrolled
The scrolls of fire that burned in his heart and head,
Torn and alone in a farm house in a fold

Of fields. And burning then
In his firelit island ringed by the winged snow
And the dung hills white as wool and the hen
Roosts sleeping chill till the flame of the cock crow
Combs through the mantled yards and the morning men

Stumble out with their spades,
The cattle stirring, the mousing cat stepping shy,
The puffed birds hopping and hunting, the milkmaids
Gentle in their clogs over the fallen sky,
And all the woken farm at its white trades,

He knelt, he wept, he prayed,
By the spit and the black pot in the log bright light
And the cup and the cut bread in the dancing shade,
In the muffled house, in the quick of night,
At the point of love, forsaken and afraid.

He knelt on the cold stones,
He wept form the crest of grief, he prayed to the veiled sky
May his hunger go howling on bare white bones
Past the statues of the stables and the sky roofed sties
And the duck pond glass and the blinding byres alone

Into the home of prayers
And fires where he should prowl down the cloud
Of his snow blind love and rush in the white lairs.
His naked need struck him howling and bowed
Though no sound flowed down the hand folded air

But only the wind strung
Hunger of birds in the fields of the bread of water, tossed
In high corn and the harvest melting on their tongues.
And his nameless need bound him burning and lost
When cold as snow he should run the wended vales among

The rivers mouthed in night,
And drown in the drifts of his need, and lie curled caught
In the always desiring centre of the white
Inhuman cradle and the bride bed forever sought
By the believer lost and the hurled outcast of light.

Deliver him, he cried,
By losing him all in love, and cast his need
Alone and naked in the engulfing bride,
Never to flourish in the fields of the white seed
Or flower under the time dying flesh astride.

Listen. The minstrels sing
In the departed villages. The nightingale,
Dust in the buried wood, flies on the grains of her wings
And spells on the winds of the dead his winter's tale.
The voice of the dust of water from the withered spring

Is telling. The wizened
Stream with bells and baying water bounds. The dew rings
On the gristed leaves and the long gone glistening
Parish of snow. The carved mouths in the rock are wind swept strings.
Time sings through the intricately dead snow drop. Listen.

It was a hand or sound
In the long ago land that glided the dark door wide
And there outside on the bread of the ground
A she bird rose and rayed like a burning bride.
A she bird dawned, and her breast with snow and scarlet downed.

Look. And the dancers move
On the departed, snow bushed green, wanton in moon light
As a dust of pigeons. Exulting, the grave hooved
Horses, centaur dead, turn and tread the drenched white
Paddocks in the farms of birds. The dead oak walks for love.

The carved limbs in the rock
Leap, as to trumpets. Calligraphy of the old
Leaves is dancing. Lines of age on the stones weave in a flock.
And the harp shaped voice of the water's dust plucks in a fold
Of fields. For love, the long ago she bird rises. Look.

And the wild wings were raised
Above her folded head, and the soft feathered voice
Was flying through the house as though the she bird praised
And all the elements of the slow fall rejoiced
That a man knelt alone in the cup of the vales,

In the mantle and calm,
By the spit and the black pot in the log bright light.
And the sky of birds in the plumed voice charmed
Him up and he ran like a wind after the kindling flight
Past the blind barns and byres of the windless farm.

In the poles of the year
When black birds died like priests in the cloaked hedge row
And over the cloth of counties the far hills rode near,
Under the one leaved trees ran a scarecrow of snow
And fast through the drifts of the thickets antlered like deer,

Rags and prayers down the knee-
Deep hillocks and loud on the numbed lakes,
All night lost and long wading in the wake of the she-
Bird through the times and lands and tribes of the slow flakes.
Listen and look where she sails the goose plucked sea,

The sky, the bird, the bride,
The cloud, the need, the planted stars, the joy beyond
The fields of seed and the time dying flesh astride,
The heavens, the heaven, the grave, the burning font.
In the far ago land the door of his death glided wide,

And the bird descended.
On a broad white hill over the cupped farm
And the lakes and floating fields and the river wended
Vales where he prayed to come to the last harm
And the home of prayers and fires, the tale ended.

The dancing perishes
On the white, no longer growing green, and, minstrel dead,
The singing breaks in the snow shoed villages of wishes
That once cut the figures of birds on the deep bread
And over the glazed lakes skated the shapes of fishes

Flying. The rite is shorn
Of nightingale and centaur dead horse. The springs wither
Back. Lines of age sleep on the stones till trumpeting dawn.
Exultation lies down. Time buries the spring weather
That belled and bounded with the fossil and the dew reborn.

For the bird lay bedded
In a choir of wings, as though she slept or died,
And the wings glided wide and he was hymned and wedded,
And through the thighs of the engulfing bride,
The woman breasted and the heaven headed

Bird, he was brought low,
Burning in the bride bed of love, in the whirl-
Pool at the wanting centre, in the folds
Of paradise, in the spun bud of the world.
And she rose with him flowering in her melting snow.

~~
Dylan Thomas (1914-1954)
from Deaths and Entrances, 1946

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]


Dylan Thomas biography

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Silver Filigree / Elinor Wylie


Silver Filigree

The icicles wreathing
On trees in festoon
Swing, swayed to our breathing:
They’re made of the moon.

She’s a pale, waxen taper;
And these seem to drip
Transparent as paper
From the flame of her tip.

Molten, smoking a little,
Into crystal they pass;
Falling, freezing, to brittle
And delicate glass.

Each a sharp-pointed flower,
Each a brief stalactite
Which hangs for an hour
In the blue cave of night.

~~
Elinor Wylie (1885-1928)
from Nets to Catch the Wind, 1921

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

Elinor Wylie biography

Saturday, February 1, 2020

Fall of Stars / George H. Dillon


Fall of Stars

The snow came down like stars tonight
Over the city silently.
The air, like a great glittering tree,
Bloomed noiselessly with light.

I thought, it is the snow I see
Like stars. And it was long ago
That ever I saw the stars like snow.

And I thought of a boy, a long time dead,
Who dreamed such beauty out of pain
That music moved within his brain
And the stars stormed in his head.

His ghost is like the wind, I said,
That cries into the crystal gloom,
And wanders where the white clouds blow.

And I shall hear his song, I know,
Wherever the boughs of silence bloom
With snow like stars or stars like snow.

~~
George H. Dillon (1906-1968)
from Poetry, August 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

George H. Dillon biography

Penny's Top 20 / January 2020


Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in January 2020:

  1.  You have to believe in happiness, Douglas Malloch
  2.  Heaven's Man, AE Reiff
  3.  January, 1795, Perdita
  4.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme
  5.  Winter Heat, Will Dockery
  6.  New Year on Dartmoor, Sylvia Plath
  7.  Wind-blown, Muna Lee
  8.  January, Rebecca Hey
  9.  
Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
10.  Winter Song, Elizabeth Tollet

11.  All Souls' Night, Frances Cornford
12.  Velvet Shoes, Elinor Wylie
13.  When icicles hang by the wall, William Shakespeare
14.  So It Befell, Eda Lou Walton
15.  The Masterpiece of Dawn, Leslie Moon
16.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
17.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
18.  Once Like a Light, AE Reiff
19.  Puella Parvula, Wallace Stevens
20. Episode of a Night in May, Arthur Symons

Source: Blogger, "Stats"

Penny's Top 100 of 2019


The 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2019:

  1. The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff
  2. Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3. Angel Standing in the Sun, AE Reiff
  4. 7/16/69, George J. Dance
  5. Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens

  6. 1915: The Trenches, Conrad Aiken
  7. The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
  8. Demons, George J. Dance
  9. Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy
10. All Souls' Night, Frances Cornford

11. Moonlight Alert, Yvor Winters
12. February's Forgotten Mitts, Raymond Knister
13. The Reader, Wallace Stevens
14. Raglan Road, Patrick Kavanagh
15. Winter Solitude, Archibald Lampman

16. A March Snow, Ella Wheeler Wilcox
17. I can remember, Stephan Pickering
18. Welcome to Spring, Ring Lardner
19. Written in March, William Wordsworth
20. New Year's Morning, Helen Hunt Jackson

21. How Do I Love Thee?, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
22. Winter, Walter de la Mare
23. January Morning, William Carlos Williams
24. Riding on the Ice upon Lake Champlain, Thomas Rowley
25. Self-Criticism in February, Robinson Jeffers

26. February Twilight, Sara Teasdale
27. Snow, Archibald Lampman
28. Chloris in the Snow, William Strode
29. News. AE Reiff
30. After Tea, F.O. Call

31. You went away in summertime, F.O. Call
32. The Spring in Ireland: 1916, James Stephens
33. There's a certain slant of light, Emily Dickinson
34. Penny (or Penny's Hat), George J. Dance
35. Calmly We Walk through this April's Day, Delmore Schwartz

36. Desert Places, Robert Frost
37. January Morning, Michael Strange
38. The March Orchard, Ethelwyn Wetherald
39. Expecting Inspiration, George Sulzbach
40. Autumn, T.E. Hulme

41. abandon, david rutkowski
42. Poppies in July, Sylvia Plath
43. November, Marjorie Allen Seiffert
44. Saint Augustine Blues #6, Will Dockery
45. Coin of the Year, Clement Wood

46. Winter, Raymond Holden
47. The Tree of My Life, Edward Rowland Sill
48. Heaven's Man, AE Reiff
49. Jonah, AE Reiff
50. You came, the vernal equinox, H.C. Beeching

51. The Day is a Poem, Robinson Jeffers
52. Rondel for September, Karle Wilson Baker
53. Twilight on 6th Avenue, Charles G.D. Roberts
54. Description of Spring, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
55. Under the harvest moon, Carl Sandburg

56. 2 poems on summer's end, Emily Dickinson
57. An Old Man's Winter Night, Robert Frost
58. Philomela, Philip Sidney
59. Autumn, Christopher Brennan
60. June Rain, Richard Aldington

61. An October Nocturne, Yvor Winters
62. Autumn Love, John Byrne Leicester Warren
63. January, E. Nesbit
64. Under the April Moon, Bliss Carman
65. Dirge of the Departed Year, John Leyden

66. The Vast Hour, Genevieve Taggart
67. Composed upon Westminster Bridge, William Wordsworth
68. A Song for Mother's Day, Marguerite Wilkinson
69. Beach Song, Pearl Andelson Sherry
70. Back Yard, Carl Sandburg

71. Autumn Rain, Pearl Andelson Sherry
72. Joy-Month, David Atwood Wasson
73. I Hear America Singing, Walt Whitman
74. The Wintry Day, Perdita
75. A Russian Easter , Marya Zaturenska

76. Spring's Sacrament, Harold E Goad
77. Berkshires in April, Clement Wood
78. Saving Daylight, C.M. Davidson-Pickett
79. Lunar Paraphrase, Wallace Stevens
80. Ballade of the Poet's Thought, Charles G.D. Roberts

81. The Frosted Pane, Charles G.D. Roberts
82. Rich Days, W.H. Davies
83. Waiting, Charles Hanson Towne
84. The Breezes of June, Paul Hamilton Hayne
85. 'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight, Emily Bronte

86. September, Lucy Maud Montgomery
87. November, Robert Bridges
88. Early May in New England, Percy MacKaye
89. After Rain, Edward Thomas
90. September in the Laurentian Hills, William Wilfred Campbell

91. In June, Ethelwyn Wetherald
92. The Thrush's Song, James Lewis Milligan
93. One sister have I in our house, Emily Dickinson
94. Break, Break, Break, Alfred Tennyson
95. On the Road to the Sea, Charlotte Mew

96. June, Francis Ledwidge
97. An Autumnal Thought, Robert Story
98. In the Glad Month of May, Coningsby Dawson
99. By the Sea, Christina Rossetti
100. The Spring, Abraham Cowley


Source: Blogger, "Stats"