The Key / George J. Dance

The Key

There is a killer, screaming to get out;
He beats his bars and rants till short of breath.
I block my ears, but still can hear him shout
Of bloody violence, destruction, death.
I must keep him confined inside of me;
I am the only one who holds the key.

There is another man locked up in there,
Though quietly he mourns on his sad fate,
On wisdom and on beauty he would share
But keeps within his cell until too late.
Before I die, I must set that man free;
I am the only one who holds the key.

~~

George J. Dance, 2020

from Logos, and other logoi, 2021

["The Key" by George J. Dance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) 4.0 International license.]

George J. Dance biography

When the Hounds of Spring / A.C. Swinburne

Chorus

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
    The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
    With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous      
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
    The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
    Maiden most perfect, lady of light,      
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
    With a clamor of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,    
    Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
    Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
    Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!    
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
    And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,      
    And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
    The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember’d is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,  
And in green underwood and cover
    Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
    Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes  
    From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes
    The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.  

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
    Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
    The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide  
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
    The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair
    Over her eyebrows, hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
    Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare      
    The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

~~
A.C. Swinburne (1837-1909)
from Atalanta in Calydon, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain world-wide]

A.C. Swinburne biography

Over and Over Again / Antti

Over And Over Again

The sun blazes on the sky
like electroshock therapy
for the dusty mind.

The birds are laughing
the grass is turning green
wheee! The children scream.

I can feel the spring
it wants bellies to go round
it wants life to abound.

Sperm to fertilize eggs
flowers to bloom on death
words to praise its beauty.

Over and over again.

~~
Antti, 2020

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

Sick and sullen and sad the slow days go / H.C. Beeching

from In a Garden:

IV

Sick and sullen and sad the slow days go;
Fog creeps over the land, and frost and snow
Grip on the springs of joy and stop their flow.

Yet at thy voice, beloved, the ice to-day
Felt the ardours of Spring, and fell away,
Bubbled again and sang with the joy of May.

~~
H.C. Beeching (1859-1919)
from In a Garden, and other poems, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

H.C. Beeching biography

Winter Rain / Christina Rossetti

Winter Rain 

Every valley drinks,
     Every dell and hollow:
Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
     Green of Spring will follow.

Yet a lapse of weeks
     Buds will burst their edges,
Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
     In the woods and hedges;

Weave a bower of love
     For birds to meet each other,
Weave a canopy above
     Nest and egg and mother.

But for fattening rain
     We should have no flowers,
Never a bud or leaf again
     But for soaking showers;

Never a mated bird
     In the rocking tree-tops,
Never indeed a flock or herd
     To graze upon the lea-crops.

Lambs so woolly white,
     Sheep the sun-bright leas on,
They could have no grass to bite
     But for rain in season.

We should find no moss
     In the shadiest places,
Find no waving meadow grass
     Pied with broad-eyed daisies:

But miles of barren sand,
     With never a son or daughter,
Not a lily on the land,
     Or lily on the water.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from Goblin Market,  and other poems, 1862

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide.]

Christina Rossetti biography

A March Wind / Francis Sherman

A March Wind

High above the trees, swinging in across the hills,
   There’s a wide cloud, ominous and slow;
And the wind that rushes over sends the little stars to cover
   And the wavering shadow fade along the snow.
Surely on my window (Hark the tumult of the night!)
   That’s a first, fitful drop of scanty rain;
And the hillside wakes and quivers with the strength of newborn rivers
   Come to make our Northland glad and free again.

O remember how the snow fell the long winter through!
   Was it yesterday I tied your snowshoes on?
All my soul grew wild with yearning for the sight of your returning
   But I waited all those hours that you were gone.
For I watched you from our window through the blurring flakes that fell
   Till you gained the quiet wood, and then I knew
(When our pathways lay together how we reveled in such weather!)
   That the ancient things I loved would comfort you.

Now I knew that you would tarry in the shadow of the firs
   And remember many winters overpast;
All the hidden signs I found you of the hiding life around you,
   Sleeping patient till the year should wake at last.
Here a tuft of fern underneath the rounded drift;
   A rock, there, behind a covered spring;
And here, nowhither tending, tracks beginning not nor ending,— 
   Was it bird or shy four-footed furry thing?

And remember how we followed down the woodman’s winding trail!
   By the axe-strokes ringing louder, one by one,
Well we knew that we were nearing now the edges of the clearing,—
   O the gleam of chips all yellow in the sun!
But the twilight fell about us as we watched him at his work;
   And in the south a sudden moon, hung low,
Beckoned us beyond the shadows — down the hill — across the meadows
   Where our little house loomed dark against the snow.

And that night, too — remember?— outside our quiet house,
   Just before the dawn we heard the moaning wind;
Only then its wings were weighted with the storm itself created
   And it hid the very things it came to find.
In the morn, when we arose, and looked out across the fields,
   (Hark the branches! how they shatter overhead!)
Seemed it not that Time was sleeping, and the whole wide world was keeping
   All the silence of the Houses of the Dead?

Ah, but that was long ago! And tonight the wind foretells
   (Hark, above the wind, the little laughing rills!)
Earth’s forgetfulness of sorrow when the dawn shall break tomorrow
   And lead me to the bases of the hills:
To the low southern hills where of old we used to go —
   (Hark the rumor of ten thousand ancient Springs!)
O my love, to thy dark quiet — far beyond our North’s mad riot —
   Do thy new Gods bring remembrance of such things?

~~
Francis Sherman (1871-1926)
From A Canadian Calendar: XII lyrics, 1900

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

Francis Sherman biography

The Mocking / Goodridge MacDonald

The Mocking
(In Memoriam, E.N.)

On a March morning,
Poplars made grey smudge at street end;
Soiled cloud sheeted sky,
And each step woke
Idiot crackle of ice.

Then a cold knife was turned in the side;
The knife of the knowledge of death
(Yet blood did not flow).
I knew that at Vence,
France, a friend had died.

The hand was stilled,
The eye, lidded; their indentures
To beauty, terminated.
Corruption closeted in a casket
Cancelled the artist’s skill.

— All, then, all metaphors,
All epigrams,
Pleas, panegyrics and denunciations,
Addressed to the queller of breath, became meaningless,
In the sound of the closing of doors.

Then were Paul and Millay put to mock;
Donne and Stevens — all the bright expositors:
Mocked by the cold knife,
The wind with its pressure of grave mould,
And the dead, who walk and walk.

~~

Goodridge MacDonald (1897-1967)

from Recent Poems, 1957

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Goodridge MacDonald biography

The Sun this March / Wallace Stevens

The Sun this March

The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become,

And re-illumines things that used to turn
To gold in broadest blue, and be a part

Of a turning spirit in an earlier self.
That, too, returns from out the winter’s air,

Like an hallucination come to daze
The corner of the eye. Our element,

Cold is our element and winter’s air
Brings voices as of lions coming down.

Oh! Rabbi, rabbi, fend my soul for me
And true savant of this dark nature be.

~~
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), 1930
from Ideas of Order, 1935

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Wallace Stevens biography

The Magician / Lilian Leveridge

from Angelo and Virgilia

I. The Magician

In the world to-night ’tis winter; whistling winds mad revels hold.
God hath cast His ice like morsels. Who can stand before His cold?
Yet a sunny softness lingers where the wild winds meet and part;
For ’tis springtime, rosy springtime — in my heart.

In the city street the lamplight shivers in the gusty blast.
Dim, dumb faces glance and vanish, hurrying footfalls echo past.
Yet I tread the vales of Springland; balmy airs about me blow
From the hillside where the scented blossoms grow.

Hoarsely roar the wheels of traffic, rushing on their tireless quest,
Where the shadows bring no silence, and the midnight hour no rest.
But they pass unheard, unheeded; for I live to-night apart,
Where the birds of morn are singing in my heart.

’Tis your clear, low tones make music, ’tis your touch has magic power
To transform the frozen desert into spring’s emblossomed bower.
’Neath the wan stars’ wintry glimmer, where the wild winds rush and part,
You have planted fragrant roses in my heart.

~~
Lilian Leveridge (1879-1953)
from A Breath of the Woods, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Lilian Leveridge biography

Penny's Top 20 / February 2020

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

  1.   Silver Filigree, Elinor Wylie
  2.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme

  3.  A Winter Bluejay, Sara Teasdale

  4.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  5.  February, Folgore de San Geminiano
  6.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
  7.  Love's Philosophy, Percy Bysshe Shelley
  8.  Shuttered House, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
  9.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
10.  Songs to Joannes XIII, Mina Loy

11.  Winter Memories, Henry David Thoreau
12.  February, Rebecca Hey
13.  Winter Poetry, Gladys Cromwell
14.  A Winter's Tale, Dylan Thomas
15.  Velvet Shoes, Elinor Wylie
16.  Fall of Stars, George H. Dillon
17.  News, AE Reiff
18.  Advice to a Butterfly, Maxwell Bodenheim
19.  Envoy, Ernest Dowson

20. Card Game, Frank Prewett

Source: Blogger, "Stats"