The moon and stars are making love / George J. Dance

The moon and stars are making love

The moon and stars are making love tonight –
As grey clouds stretch to shield them from our gaze,
They burn with passion, warmly dripping light,
Entrancing us below their silver rays;
We hear low whispering, see the gentle motion
Of trees and wind entwined in an embrace;
We watch the river, mighty as an ocean,
Thrust its waters in the still lake's face;
Around us frogs and crickets serenade
And birds call to their mates, as man to wife;
A glorious vision's everywhere displayed,
The miracle of life creating life.
   My dear, amid this splendour, hear my plea:
   If all the world can love, then why not we?

~~
George J. Dance, 2020

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography

The Midsummer Wish / John Hawkesworth

The Midsummer Wish

O Phoebus! down the western sky
Far hence diffuse thy burning ray,
Thy light to distant worlds supply,
And wake them to the cares of day.

Come, gentle Eve, the friend of Care,
Come, Cynthia, lovely queen of night!
Refresh me with a cooling breeze,
And chear me with a lambent light.

Lay me where o'er the verdant ground
Her living carpet Nature spreads;
Where the green bower, with roses crown'd,
In showers its fragrant foliage sheds.

Improve the peaceful hour with wine,
Let music die along the grove;
Around the bowl let myrtles twine,
And every strain be tun'd to Love.

Come, Stella, queen of all my heart!
Come, born to fill its vast desires!
Thy looks perpetual joys impart,
Thy voice perpetual love inspires.

While, all my wish and thine complete,
By turns we languish, and we burn,
Let sighing gales our sighs repeat,
Our murmurs murmuring brooks return.

Let me, when Nature calls to rest,
And blushing skies the morn foretell,
Sink on the down of STELLA's breast,
And bid the waking world farewell.

~~
John Hawkesworth (1720-1773)
from A Collection of Poems in Four Volumes; by several hands, 1770

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Hawkesworth biography

A Father to His Son / Carl Sandburg

A Father to His Son

A father sees a son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum and monotony
and guide him amid sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
And left them dead years before burial:
The quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
Has twisted good enough men
Sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use amongst other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
      Then he may understand Shakespeare
      and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
      Michael Faraday and free imaginations
bringing changes into a world resenting change.
      He will be lonely enough
      to have time for the work
      he knows as his own.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from The People, Yes, 1936

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Carl Sandburg biography

But One / Ella Wheeler Wilcox

But One

The year has but one June, dear friend,
     The year has but one June;
And when that perfect month doth end,
The robin's song, though loud, though long,
     Seems never quite in tune.

The rose, though still its blushing face
     By bee and bird is seen,
May yet have lost that subtle grace —
That nameless spell the winds know well —
     Which makes its gardens queen.

Life's perfect June, love's red, red rose,
     Have burned and bloomed for me.
Though still youth's summer sunlight glows;
Though thou art kind, dear friend, I find
     I have no heart for thee.

~~
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
from Poems of Passion, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ella Wheeler Wilcox biography

Midmost June / Wilfred Rowland Childe

Midmost June

{For E.H.W.M.)

All through the hot, gray, sleepy afternoon
The thin gnats flew and sang,
The gardens of dim spices were aswoon,
And the earth was faint, and the sun like a pale moon,
And the sweet air rang.

Poppy and peony, larkspur, lily, rose
Nodded and fell asleep.
That the dull bees upon their lips might doze,
No petals to the warm air dared unclose,
And the trees did weep.

From off the misty plots of tasselled flowers.
And the lawns and endless leas,
And all the drooping, sleep-entangled bowers,
A steam went up through the long, blue, lagging hours,
And there was no breeze.

~~
Wilfred Rowland Chile (1890-1952)
from The Little City, 1911

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

Wilfred Rowland Childe biography

2 poems / Lizette Woodworth Reese

A Rhyme for June

Now marshy pools on the road's edge,
Or creeks that slip 'twixt banks of sedge,
With marigolds be set aflare;
And not a corner south or north,
But there a brier-rose breaks forth,
And bees go droning down the air.

The bramble now begins to blow,
The elder-bush puts on its snow,
And birds be sweet till fall of dew;
And when my love and I go out,
So thick the grass grows all about
In truth, it scarce will let us through.


After the Rain 

Dripping the hollyhocks beneath the wall
     Their fires half quenched, a smouldering red;
A shred of gold upon the grasses tall,
     A butterfly is hanging dead.

A sound of trickling waters, like a tune
     Set to sweet words; a wind that blows
Wet boughs against a saffron sky; all June
     Caught in the breath of one white rose.

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

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

Lizette Woordworth Reese biography

A New England June / Bliss Carman

A New England June

These things I remember
Of New England June,
Like a vivid day-dream
In the azure noon,
While one haunting figure
Strays through every scene,
Like the soul of beauty
Through her lost demesne.

Gardens full of roses
And peonies a-blow
In the dewy morning,
Row on stately row,
Spreading their gay patterns,
Crimson, pied and cream,
Like some gorgeous fresco
Or an Eastern dream.

Nets of waving sunlight
Falling through the trees;
Fields of gold-white daisies
Rippling in the breeze;
Lazy lifting groundswells,
Breaking green as jade
On the lilac beaches,
Where the shore-birds wade.

Orchards full of blossom,
Where the bob-white calls
And the honeysuckle
Climbs the old gray walls;
Groves of silver birches,
Beds of roadside fern,
In the stone-fenced pasture
At the river's turn.

Out of every picture
Still she comes to me
With the morning freshness
Of the summer sea,—
A glory in her bearing,
A sea-light in her eyes,
As if she could not forget
The spell of Paradise.

Thrushes in the deep woods,
With their golden themes,
Fluting like the choirs
At the birth of dreams.
Fireflies in the meadows
At the gate of Night,
With their fairy lanterns
Twinkling soft and bright.

Ah, not in the roses,
Nor the azure noon,
Nor the thrushes' music,
Lies the soul of June.
It is something finer,
More unfading far,
Than the primrose evening
And the silver star;

Something of the rapture
My beloved had,
When she made the morning
Radiant and glad,—
Something of her gracious
Ecstasy of mien,
That still haunts the twilight,
Loving though unseen.

When the ghostly moonlight
Walks my garden ground,
Like a leisurely patrol
On his nightly round,
These things I remember
Of the long ago,
While the slumbrous roses
Neither care nor know.

~~
Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
from Later Poems, 1926

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

Bliss Carman biography

One Spring / Eda Lou Walton

from Hill Songs:

One Spring

One spring I lost completely,
Giving it to you.
Only myself,
Who died,
Knew.      

One spring I lost completely.
Now each spring is two —
The wild sweet spring
I lost,
And the new.

~~
Eda Lou Walton (1894-1961)
from Poetry, May 1920

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

Eda Lou Walton biography

Photo by Kristýna Matlachová. Courtesy Pixabay, 2020. 

Penny's Top 20 / May 2020

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

  1.   Amarant, AE Reiff
  2.  Spring, George J. Dance 

  3.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  4.  June Rain, Richard Aldington
  5.  Dandelions, George Sulzbach
  6.  The Plant, AE Reiff
  7.  The Wild Flower's Song, William Blake
  8.  To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, Robert Herrick
  9.  Ode to May, Mary Darwall
10.  A Garden of Love, Lilian Leveridge

11.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
12.  A Pastoral, Mary Robinson
13.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme
14.  Verses Written in the Spring, Ann Batten Cristall
15.  Ganesha Girl on Rankin, Will Dockery
16.  All Souls' Night, Frances Cornford
17.  Love is not all, Edna St. Vincent Millay
18.  The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff
19.  The stars are glittering in the frosty sky, Charles Heavysege

20. To the Sea Angel, Will Dockery

Source: Blogger, "Stats"