February / Michael Field

February

Gay lucidity,
Not yet sunshine, in the air;
Tingling secrets hidden everywhere,
Each at watch for each;
Sap within the hillside beech,
Not a leaf to see.

~~
Michael Field
from Underneath the Bough, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography

February: A pastoral poem / William Perfect

February: A pastoral poem

To a shepherd unpractis'd in art,
Ye maids of Parnassus incline;
To him your assistance impart,
Whose tribute is laid at your shrine.
Tho' dull and ungenial the day,
Bright Pity appears in the vale,
The sportsmen her mandates obey,
No longer the coppice assail.

Nor longer with spaniel and gun,
In dress which the bramble defies,
Accusing the slow-rising sun,
To cover young Doriland hies.
The pheasants beneath the rude thorn
In safety their plumage may spread,
Or venture to pilfer the corn
The hand of Rusticity shed.

No dangers the covey annoy;
Securely the partridge shall pair,
And taste of each warm sunny joy,
As Phoebus impregnates the air.
But Mercy is partial; for lo!
Black perils await on the fen,
The snipe feels the death-levell'd blow,
Which the woodcock destroys in the glen.

To scenes of more softness I speed,
The muse in her pastoral flight,
Come, Flora, enamel the mead,
Replenish the earth with delight:
Conceal not your mantle of green,
For nature's cold bosom is bare,
You purpose to clothe the dark scene,
The snow-drop alone can declare.

The snow-drop, young blossom, how chill'd,
Cold herald, with winter in rear,
Thy veins seem with isicles fill'd,
Pale gift of the unripen'd year.
If other weak flow'rets are found,
They scent not the spiritless day,
They breathe not an odour around,
Are neither inviting or gay.

Should clouds in succession descend,
The landskips to deluge in show'rs,
Or mists o'er the cottages bend,
Consigning to dulness the hours:
Yet sorrow disturbs not the soul,
Content for her residence forms,
Altho' in the far distant pole
Extends the rough blast of the storms.

Content come with visage serene,
Thy blessings unfold to my view,
Attendant be innocence seen,
I want not the wealth of Peru.
The bosom of calmness is thine;
The Virtues in modest array,
Thy presents are ever benign,
Thy song is the music of May.

Pastora inspire my reed,
Can sounds more harmonious flow,
From encomiums more justly proceed,
Than those which to Delia I owe.
For now the fair morning appears,
My muse with enchantment to wing,
Another we add to her years,
'Tis the birth-day of Delia I sing.

Tho' naked and brown are the lawns,
And winter still harrows the day,
Aurora transcendently dawns,
For Delia has heighten'd her ray.
For her, with each grace in her train,
Shall spring in fresh beauty appear,
The summer's varieties reign,
And winter no longer appear.

Prophetic, methinks, that my song
Has called up the earth-cheering breeze,
The birds am'rous ditties prolong,
The turtles soft coo in the trees.
Each warbler the symphony hails,
And harmony gentle creates,
'Tis Cupid my fair one prevails,
On their musical nuptials awaits.

A chaplet I'll weave for the morn,
The myrtle soft verdure bespreads,
Flora wakens the wreath to adorn,
And rises wherever she treads.
Let Delia approve my fond lays,
Accept of the garland I twine,
My brow shall be cover'd with bays,
In honour of her Valentine.

~~
William Perfect (1737-1809)
from Sentimental Magazine, February 1774

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Perfect biography

February: An elegy / Thomas Chatterton

February: An elegy

Begin, my muse, the imitative lay,
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string;
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay,
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing.

If in the trammels of the doleful line,
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend;
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine,
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend.

Now the rough goat withdraws his curling horns,
And the cold wat'rer twirls his circling mop:
Swift sudden anguish darts thro' alt'ring corns,
And the spruce mercer trembles in his shop.

Now infant authors, madd'ning for renown,
Extend the plume, and hum about the stage,
Procure a benefit, amuse the town,
And proudly glitter in a title page.

Now, wrapt in ninefold fur, his squeamish grace
Defies the fury of the howling storm;
And whilst the tempest whistles round his face,
Exults to find his mantled carcase warm.

Now rumbling coaches furious drive along,
Full of the majesty of city dames,
Whose jewels sparkling in the gaudy throng,
Raise strange emotions and invidious flames.

Now Merit, happy in the calm of place,
To mortals as a Highlander appears,
And conscious of the excellence of lace,
With spreading frogs and gleaming spangles glares:

Whilst Envy, on a tripod seated nigh,
In form a shoe-boy, daubs the valu'd fruit,
And darting lightnings from his vengeful eye,
Raves about Wilkes, and politics, and Bute,

Now Barry, taller than a grenadier,
Dwindles into a strippling of eighteen;
Or sabled in Othello breaks the ear,
Exerts his voice, and totters to the scene.

Now Foote, a looking-glass for all mankind,
Applies his wax to personal defects;
But leaves untouch'd the image of the mind,
His art no mental quality reflects.

Now Drury's potent king extorts applause,
And pit, box, gallery, echo, "How divine!"
Whilst vers'd in all the drama's mystic laws,
His graceful action saves the wooden line.

Now — But what further can the muses sing?
Now dropping particles of water fall;
Now vapours riding on the north wind's wing,
With transitory darkness shadow all.

Alas! How joyless the descriptive theme,
When sorrow on the writer's quiet preys;
And like a mouse in Cheshire cheese supreme,
Devours the substance of the less'ning bayes.

Come, February, lend thy darkest sky.
There teach the winter'd muse with clouds to soar:
Come, February, lift the number high;
Let the sharp strain like wind thro' alleys roar.

Ye channels, wand'ring thro' the spacious street,
In hollow murmurs roll the dirt along,
With inundations wet the sabled feet,
Whilst gouts responsive, join th'elegiac song.

Ye damsels fair, whose silver voices shrill
Sound thro' meand'ring folds of Echo's horn;
Let the sweet cry of liberty be still,
No more let smoking cakes awake the morn.

O, Winter! Put away thy snowy pride;
O, Spring! Neglect the cowslip and the bell;
O, Summer! Throw thy pears and plums aside;
O, Autumn! Bid the grape with poison swell.

The pension'd muse of Johnson is no more!
Drown'd in a butt of wine his genius lies:
Earth! Ocean! Heav'n! The wond'rous loss deplore,
The dregs of Nature with her glory dies.

What iron Stoic can suppress the tear;
What sour reviewer read with vacant eye!
What bard but decks his literary bier!
Alas! I cannot sing — I howl — I cry —

~~
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)
from Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 1778

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Chatterton biography

The Thrush in February / George Meredith

The Thrush in February

I know him, February’s thrush,
And loud at eve he valentines
On sprays that paw the naked bush
Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

Now ere the foreign singer thrills
Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours,
A herald of the million bills;
And heed him not, the loss is yours.

My study, flanked with ivied fir
And budded beech with dry leaves curled,
Perched over yew and juniper,
He neighbours, piping to his world:—

The wooded pathways dank on brown,
The branches on grey cloud a web,
The long green roller of the down,
An image of the deluge-ebb:—

And farther, they may hear along
The stream beneath the poplar row.
By fits, like welling rocks, the song
Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.

But most he loves to front the vale
When waves of warm South-western rains
Have left our heavens clear in pale,
With faintest beck of moist red veins:

Vermilion wings, by distance held
To pause aflight while fleeting swift:
And high aloft the pearl inshelled
Her lucid glow in glow will lift;

A little south of coloured sky;
Directing, gravely amorous,
The human of a tender eye
Through pure celestial on us:

Remote, not alien; still, not cold;
Unraying yet, more pearl than star;
She seems a while the vale to hold
In trance, and homelier makes the far.

Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes,
An orb of lustre quits the height;
And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths
The sky takes darkness, long ere quite.

His Island voice then shall you hear,
Nor ever after separate
From such a twilight of the year
Advancing to the vernal gate.

He sings me, out of Winter’s throat,
The young time with the life ahead;
And my young time his leaping note
Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead.

Imbedded in a land of greed,
Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth’s,
My care was but to soothe my need;
At peace among the littleworths.

To light and song my yearning aimed;
To that deep breast of song and light
Which men have barrenest proclaimed;
As ’tis to senses pricked with fright.

So mine are these new fruitings rich
The simple to the common brings;
I keep the youth of souls who pitch
Their joy in this old heart of things:

Who feel the Coming young as aye,
Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough;
Alive for life, awake to die;
One voice to cheer the seedling Now.

Full lasting is the song, though he,
The singer, passes: lasting too,
For souls not lent in usury,
The rapture of the forward view.

With that I bear my senses fraught
Till what I am fast shoreward drives.
They are the vessel of the Thought.
The vessel splits, the Thought survives.

Nought else are we when sailing brave,
Save husks to raise and bid it burn.
Glimpse of its livingness will wave
A light the senses can discern

Across the river of the death,
Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird
Of promise! bird of happy breath!
I hear, I would the City heard.

The City of the smoky fray;
A prodded ox, it drags and moans:
Its Morrow no man’s child; its Day
A vulture’s morsel beaked to bones.

It strives without a mark for strife;
It feasts beside a famished host:
The loose restraint of wanton life,
That threatened penance in the ghost!

Yet there our battle urges; there
Spring heroes many: issuing thence,
Names that should leave no vacant air
For fresh delight in confidence.

Life was to them the bag of grain,
And Death the weedy harrow’s tooth.
Those warriors of the sighting brain
Give worn Humanity new youth.

Our song and star are they to lead
The tidal multitude and blind
From bestial to the higher breed
By fighting souls of love divined,

They scorned the ventral dream of peace,
Unknown in nature. This they knew:
That life begets with fair increase
Beyond the flesh, if life be true.

Just reason based on valiant blood,
The instinct bred afield would match
To pipe thereof a swelling flood,
Were men of Earth made wise in watch.

Though now the numbers count as drops
An urn might bear, they father Time.
She shapes anew her dusty crops;
Her quick in their own likeness climb.

Of their own force do they create;
They climb to light, in her their root.
Your brutish cry at muffled fate
She smites with pangs of worse than brute.

She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears
A Mother whom no cry can melt;
But read her past desires and fears,
The letters on her breast are spelt.

A slayer, yea, as when she pressed
Her savage to the slaughter-heaps,
To sacrifice she prompts her best:
She reaps them as the sower reaps.

But read her thought to speed the race,
And stars rush forth of blackest night:
You chill not at a cold embrace
To come, nor dread a dubious might.

Her double visage, double voice,
In oneness rise to quench the doubt.
This breath, her gift, has only choice
Of service, breathe we in or out.

Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand
Led our wild steps from slimy rock
To yonder sweeps of gardenland,
We breathe but to be sword or block.

The sighting brain her good decree
Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith,
By reason hourly fed, that she,
To some the clod, to some the wraith,

Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream.
Flame, stream, are we, in mid career
From torrent source, delirious dream,
To heaven-reflecting currents clear.

And why the sons of Strength have been
Her cherished offspring ever; how
The Spirit served by her is seen
Through Law; perusing love will show.

Love born of knowledge, love that gains
Vitality as Earth it mates,
The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,
The Life, the Death, illuminates.

For love we Earth, then serve we all;
Her mystic secret then is ours:
We fall, or view our treasures fall,
Unclouded, as beholds her flowers

Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,
Enrobed in morning’s mounted fire,
When lowly, with a broken neck,
The crocus lays her cheek to mire.

~~
George Meredith (1828-1909)
from A Reading of Earth, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Meredith biography

When I too long have looked upon your face / Edna St. Vincent Millay

 
from Unnamed Sonnets

VII

When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark.

~~
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
from Second April, 1921

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay biography

Sonnet 1977 / Will Dockery

Sonnet 1977

In 1977 all was fair
that February, walking to the show;
we saw our shadowy kingdom draped in snow
and felt the creativity in the air
the night when, like a blessing from above,
we met beneath the silver blazing stars.
No challenger to sound the battle charge;
we knew that we had met in instant love.

On her eternal beauty I reflect –
at 17 and 19, in our prime,
expecting nothing but success in time,
we faced the future, seeing no defect,
mature in our intent, though young in days,
made confident by love and mutual praise.

~~
Will Dockery
2020

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

False February / John Payne

False February

Not seldom, whilst the Winter yet is king,
Whilst yet the meads are mute and boughs are bare,
A stirring in the February air
There comes, as with a faint foreshadowing,
A passing prophecy of far-off Spring
And distant days, when all the world shall wear
The lovely liveries of Summer fair,
That sets our wintry thought upon the wing.
Well though we know the thing's a Winter's trick,
To hold the soul with expectation sick,
And he will soon resume his iron reign,
Yet our fond hearts alone with hope in vain
Swell not; for hark, the swallows in the eaves
Rejoice as though the world were lush with leaves.

~~
John Payne (1842-1916)
from Vigil and Vision; New sonnets, 1903

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Payne biography

The February Hush / Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The February Hush

Snow o’er the darkening moorlands,
Flakes fill the quiet air;
Drifts in the forest hollows,
And a soft mask everywhere.

The nearest twig on the pine-tree
Looks blue through the whitening sky,
And the clinging beech-leaves rustle
Though never a wind goes by.

But there’s red on the wildrose berries,
And red in the lovely glow
On the cheeks of the child beside me,
That once were pale, like snow.

~~
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)
from The Afternoon Landscape, 1889

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Wentworth Higginson biography

Penny's Top 20 / January 2021

  

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in January 2021:

  1.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  2.  The Holly and the Ivy

  3.  Old and New Year Ditties, Christina Rosetti

  4.  January, Ruby Archer

  5.  Written in Winter, Catherine Manners
  6.  The Fairy in Winter, Walter de la Mare
  7.  Winter, William Carlos Williams

  8.  Winter in the Country, Claude McKay
  9.  The Winter Evening, William Cowper
10.  Over the wood the sun burns, William Wilfred Campbell

11.  The Passing of the Year, Robert Service
12.  January: A pastoral poem, William Perfect
13.  A Snow-flake, Thomas Bailey Aldrich
14.  A Miracle, George J. Dance
15.  Call Back Our Dead, Frederick George Scott
16.  News, AE Reiff
17.  Winter Field, A.E. Coppard

18.  Skating, William Wordsworth
19.  The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff

20. Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy

Source: Blogger, "Stats"