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Saturday, October 31, 2020

Where Once Poe Walked / H.P. Lovecraft


Where Once Poe Walked

Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a specter glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, though his song
Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
Only the few who sorcery's secret know,
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.

~~
H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)
from Weird Tales, 1938

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

"Where Poe Once Walked" animation by Jim Clark 2014

H.P. Lovecraft bibliography

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Autumn Communion / Gladys Cromwell


Autumn Communion

This autumn afternoon
My fancy need invent
No untried sacrament.
Man can still commune
With Beauty as of old:
The tree, the wind’s lyre,
The whirling dust, the fire —
In these my faith is told.

Beauty warms us all;
When horizons crimson burn,
We hold heaven’s cup in turn.
The dry leaves gleaming fall,
Crumbs of mystical bread;
My dole of Beauty I break,
Love to my lips I take,
And fear is quieted.

The symbols of old are made new:
I watch the reeds and the rushes,
The spruce trees dip their brushes
In the mountain’s dusky blue;
The sky is deep like a pool;
A fragrance the wind brings over
Is warm like hidden clover,
Though the wind itself is cool.

Across the air, between
The stems and the grey things,
Sunlight a trellis flings.
In quietude I lean:
I hear the lifting zephyr
Soft and shy and wild;
And I feel earth gentle and mild
Like the eyes of a velvet heifer.

Love scatters and love disperses.
Lightly the orchards dance
In a lovely radiance.
Down sloping terraces
They toss their mellow fruits.
The rhythmic wind is sowing,
Softly the floods are flowing
Between the twisted roots.

What Beauty need I own
When the symbol satisfies?
I follow services
Of tree and cloud and stone.
Color floods the world;
I am swayed by sympathy;
Love is a litany
In leaf and cloud unfurled.

~~
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, October 24, 2020

Autumn Dream / Lilian Leveridge


Autumn Dream

I know where the oaks and maples
Are setting the hills ablaze,
And the elms and the amber beeches
Are gilding the woodland ways.
I know where the scarlet sumachs
Are holding their torches high,
And the soft, blue smoke of the asters
Floats up to the rim of sky.

I know where the ripe nuts cluster —
Brown twins in a burly husk —
On the ridge where the crested bluejay
Wings home in the frosty dusk;
Where the killdeer calls in the starlight
His plaintive and weird good-night,
And the silence is stirred by the wing-beats
Of geese on their southward flight.
I know where a forest pathway
Winds on to the rim of the world,
Where smoke-wreaths hang in the twilight,
Like banners of love unfurled,
O’er an old grey house in the valley.
O see, in the autumn gloam,
Like beacons lit for a welcome,
The beckoning lights of home.

~~
Lilian Leveridge (1879-1953)
from The Blossom Trail, 1932

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Lilian Leveridge biography

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Autumn / W.H. Davies


Autumn

Autumn grows old: he, like some simple one,
In Summer's castaway is strangely clad;
Such withered things the winds in frolic mad
Shake from his feeble hand and forehead wan.

Autumn is sighing for his early gold,
And in his tremble dropping his remains;
The brook talks more, as one bereft of brains,
Who singeth loud, delirious with the cold.

O now with drowsy June one hour to be!
Scarce waking strength to hear the hum of bees,
Or cattle lowing under shady trees,
Knee deep in waters loitering to the sea.

I would that drowsy June awhile were here,
The amorous South wind carrying all the vale –
Save that white lily true to star as pale,
Whose secret day-dream Phoebus burns to hear.

~~
W.H. Davies (1871-1940)
from The Soul's Destroyer, and other poems, 1905 

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

W.H. Davies biography

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Autumn / Thomas Brerewood


Autumn

Tho' the seasons must alter, ah! yet let me find
What all must confess to be rare,
A female still cheerful, and faithful and kind,
The blessings of autumn to share.

Let one side of our cottage, a flourishing vine
Overspread with its branches, and shade;
Whose clusters appear more transparent and fine,
As its leaves are beginning to fade.

When the fruit makes the branches bend down with its load,
In our orchard surrounded with pales:
In a bed of clean straw let our apples be stow'd,
For a tart that in winter regales.

When the vapours that rise from the earth in the morn
Seem to hang on its surface like smoke,
'Till dispers'd by the sun that gilds over the corn,
Within doors let us prattle and joke.

But when we see clear all the hues of the leaves,
And at work in the fields are all hands,
Some in reaping the wheat, others binding the sheaves,
Let us carelesly stroll o'er the lands.

How pleasing the sight of the toiling they make,
To collect what kind Nature has sent!
Heaven grant we may not of their labour partake;
But, oh! give us their happy content.

And sometimes on a bank, under shade, by a brook,
Let us silently sit at our ease,
And there gaze on the stream, till the fish on the hook
Struggles hard to procure its release.

And now when the husbandman sings harvest home,
And the corn's all got into the house;
When the long wish'd for time of their meeting is come,
To frolic, and feast, and carouse:

When the leaves from the trees are begun to be shed,
And are leaving the branches all bare,
Either strew'd at the roots, shrivell'd, wither'd, and dead,
Or else blown to and fro in the air;

When the ways are so miry, that bogs they might seem,
And the axle-tree's ready to break,
While the waggoner whistles in stopping his team,
And then claps the poor jades on the neck;

In the morning let's follow the cry of the hounds,
Or the fearful young covey beset;
Which, tho' skulking in stubble and weeds on the grounds,
Are becoming a prey to the net.

Let's enjoy all the pleasure retirement affords,
Still amus'd with these innocent sports,
Nor once envy the pomp of fine ladies and lords,
With their grand entertainments in courts.

In the evening when lovers are leaning on stiles,
Deep engag'd in some amorous chat,
And 'tis very well known by his grin, and her smiles,
What they both have a mind to be at;

To our dwelling, tho' homely, well-pleas'd to repair,
Let our mutual endearments revive,
And let no single action, or look, but declare,
How contented and happy we live.

Should ideas arise that may ruffle the soul,
Let soft music the phantoms remove,
For 'tis harmony only has force to controul,
And unite all the passions in love.

With her eyes but half open, her cap all awry,
When the lass is preparing for bed;
And the sleepy dull clown, who sits nodding just by,
Sometimes rouzes and scratches his head.

In the night when 'tis cloudy and rainy, and dark,
And the labourers snore as they lie,
Not a noise to disturb us, unless a dog bark
In the farm, or the village hard by.

At the time of sweet rest, and of quiet like this,
Ere our eyes are clos'd up in their lids,
Let us welcome the season, and taste of that bliss,
Which the sunshine and daylight forbids.

~~ 
Thomas Brerewood (died 1748)
from A collection of the most esteemed pieces of poetry, 1767.

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Brerewood biography

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Harvest / John Addington Symonds


The west is purple, and a golden globe,
Sphered with new-risen moonlight, hangs between
The skirts of evening's amethystine robe
And the round world bathed in the steady sheen.
There bending o'er a sickle bright and keen,
Rests from his long day's labour one whose eyes
Are fixed upon the large and luminous skies :

An earnest man he seems with yellow hair,
And yellow neath his scythe-sweep are the sheaves;
Much need hath he to waste the nights with care,
Lest waking he should hear from dripping eaves
The plash of rain, or hail among thin leaves,
Or melancholy wailings of a wind,
That lays broad field and furrow waste behind.

Much need hath he the live-long day to toil,
Sweeping the golden granaries of the plain,
Until he garner all the summer's spoil,
And store his gaping barns with heavy grain;
Then will he sleep, nor heed the plash of rain,
But with gay wassail and glad winter cheer
Steel a stout heart against the coming year.

~~
John Addington Symonds (1840-1893)
from New and Old: A volume of verse, 1880 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Saturday, October 10, 2020

By the Autumn Sea / Paul Hamilton Hayne


By the Autumn Sea

Fair as the dawn of the fairest day,
Sad as the evening's tender gray,
By the latest lustre of sunset kissed,
That wavers and wanes through an amber mist,
There cometh a dream of the past to me,
On the desert sands, by the autumn sea.

All heaven is wrapped in a mystic veil,
And the face of the ocean is dim and pale,
And there rises a wind front the chill northwest,
That seemeth the wail of a soul's unrest,
As the twilight falls, and the vapors flee
Far over the wastes of the autumn sea.

A single ship through the gloaming glides
Upborne on the swell of the seaward tides;
And above the gleam of her topmost spar
Are the virgin eyes of the vesper-star
That shine with an angel's ruth on me,
A hopeless waif, by the autumn sea.

The wings of the ghostly beach-birds gleam
Through the shimmering surf, and the curlew's scream
Falls faintly shrill from the darkening height;
The first weird sigh on the lips of Night
Breathes low through the sedge and the blasted tree,
With a murmur of doom, by the autumn sea.

Oh, sky-enshadowed and yearning main,
Your gloom but deepens this human pain;
Those waves seem big with a nameless care,
That sky is a type of the heart's despair,
As I linger and muse by the sombre lea,
And the night shades close on the autumn sea.
~~
Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886)
from Poems, 1882

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Paul Hamilton Hayne biography

Sunday, October 4, 2020

Falltime / Carl Sandburg


Falltime

from Redhaw Winds

Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
Canada-thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Why do you keep wishes shining on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities?
What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September — acres of birds spotting the air going south?


Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Poetry, October 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Saturday, October 3, 2020

The Fragile Season / Yvor Winters


The Fragile Season

The scent of summer thins,
The air grows cold.

One walks alone
And chafes one’s hands.

The fainter aspen
Thin to air.
          The dawn
Is frost on roads.

This ending of the year
Is like the lacy ending
    of a last year’s leaf
Turned up in silence.

Air gives way to cold.

~~
Yvor Winters (1900-1968)
from Poetry, September 1922

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

Friday, October 2, 2020

Penny's Top 20 / September 2020


Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in September 2020:

  1.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
  2.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3.  September, Carlos Wilcox
  4.  Green, Paul Verlaine
  5.  Invitation to the Voyage, Charles Baudelaire
  6.  September, George Arnold
  7.  Summer to Autumn, Glenn Ward Dresbach
  8.  Summer and the Poet, William Howitt
  9.  In September, Edward Dowden
10.  Sunlight, AE Reiff

11.  Elegy in April and September, Wilfred Owen
12.  Dandelions, George Sulzbach
13.  The moon and stars are making love, George J. Dance
14.  The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff
15.  The Last Rose of Summer, Thomas Moore
16.  Amarant, AE Reiff
17.  The Reader, Wallace Stevens
18.  A Song for September, Thomas William Parsons
19.  Angel Standing in the Sun, AE Reiff
20. Written in March, William Wordsworth

Source: Blogger, "Stats"