Sunday, March 28, 2021

The Winds / William Carlos Williams


The Winds

flowing edge to edge
their clear edges meeting —
the winds of this northern March —
blow the bark from the trees
the soil from the field
the hair from the heads of
girls, the shirts from the backs
of the men, roofs from the
houses, the cross from the
church, clouds from the sky
the fur from the faces of
wild animals, crusts
from scabby eyes, scales from
the mind and husbands from wives

~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
from Collected Poems, 1921-1931, 1934

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

Saturday, March 27, 2021

March Morning in Canada /
William Wilfred Campbell


March Morning in Canada

This limpid, sweet, spring morning, all the air
     Is full of far-off, echoing, long-drawn sound;
The very city, like a dream, is fair,
     And, mirage-like, floats upward from the ground.

The fleecy clouds are loose like sails of ships,
     Windless, in harbour safe, of storms undriven;
And like a breath exhaled from dying lips,
     The censer-smoke ascends into the heaven.

The warming year flames inward in a breath;
     And like some Titan rousing to be free,
The lakes their bonds have burst of icy death,
     And all their streams go roaring to the sea.

Far in the lonely, wintry woods, I know,
     Creatures of earth turn blindly to the sun:
And o'er the barren lands, the raucous crow
     Prophesies, sole ill, of death undone.

And I, too, child of nature, like those others,
     Linked to the life of earth, throughout her rind,
Do feel the pagan joy with my glad brothers,
     And live anew with bud and bird and wind.

~~
William Wilfred Campbell (1860-1918)
from Poetical Works, 1922

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

William Wilfred Campbell biography

Sunday, March 21, 2021

A Morning Song (for the First Day of Spring) / Eleanor Farjeon


A Morning Song
(for the First Day of Spring)

Morning has broken
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
     Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them, springing
     From the first Word.

Sweet the rain’s new fall
Sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall
     In the first hour.
Praise for the sweetness
Of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness
     From the first shower.

Mine is the sunlight!
Mine is the morning
Born of the one light
     Eden saw play;
Praise with elation,
Praise every morning,
Spring’s re-creation
     Of the first day.

~~
Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965), 1922
from
The Children's Bells, 1957

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Saturday, March 20, 2021

March: A pastoral poem / William Perfect


March: A pastoral poem

In the habit of Proteus clad,
With aspect ferocious and wild,
Now pleasing, now sullen and sad,
Now froward, now placid and mild,
In his hand, from the Zodiac fled,
The Aries progressive is seen,
The bloom of the almond is shed
Around his unciviliz'd mien.

'Tis March — how tremendous they blow,
Unprison'd what tempests arise
From the caverns of Boreas below,
The hills feel the blasts of the skies.
The hills echo loud, and the deep
Ascends in big surges of foam;
The ships o'er the precipice sweep,
Thro' perils implacable roam.

Ye winds, your rude tumults assuage;
O cease your resentment to pour,
Forbear your despotical rage;
O hear the young season deplore.
Let morning your friendship resume,
Revive nature's low-bending head,
Send Zephyr, with soft silken plume,
The breath of Favonious to spread.

'Tis done: on the bank of the rill
Peeps the primrose in innocence dress'd,
Serene as its waters distil,
Blooms the gem of the season confess'd.
The sky-tinctur'd violet is seen
Her blossoms of odour to shed,
She looks as the purple-rob'd queen
Of the treasure young verdure has spread.

These are gifts for my fair, let me bring,
The primrose and violet gay;
Such innocent poesies of spring,
My purest affection convey.
She comes, as the moon from the cloud,
My snow-bosom'd Delia appears,
With a soul of mild virtue endow'd,
And her cheek unpolluted with tears.

She smiles, and the buds of the grove
Methinks into foliage expand,
Rob'd in all the soft lustre of love,
A lambkin she leads in her hand.
It was the first born of the fold;
Which but for her care had been lost,
Her tenderness sav'd from the cold
The dreadful effects of the frost.

She smiles — and elate with the sound
Of bells from the hamlet below,
Festivity bids to abound,
The cause ev'ry shepherd must know;
Must know what Selander the gay,
To Melicent, beautiful maid,
By Hymen on this jocund day,
The bridegroom of transport was made.

Did Hymen e'er look with more grace?
— The muse is invited a guest —
Was ever more chearful his face,
Than on this pleasing union express'd?
Ye shepherds, convene on the lea,
Let mirth the most sprightly be ours,
Go, Delia, announce the decree,
And call up the musical pow'rs.

The crocus of gold-colour'd hue,
The hyacinth, gaudy in vest,
The sweet polyanthuses too,
And anemone wantonly dress'd.
The Mezerion worthy of praise,
Tho' fraught with no lavish perfume,
And willow, whose silver-like rays,
Are shed from its white-velvet bloom.

These let us collect, and we'll weave
A garland for Melicent's brow,
I'm certain the fair will receive
The gift which her shepherd's bestow.
The pair will the present approve,
And gratefully honour my lay;
'Tis nature, the union of love,
Be ever recorded the day.

Selander, O long be thou blest,
Long cherish the maid of thy heart,
Thou choice of his unreserv'd breast,
A passion that's mutual impart.
So your loves shall no trouble annoy,
But Hymen incessantly sing,
That March was the parent of joy,
As well as the father of spring.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Perfect biography

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Craving for Spring / D.H. Lawrence


Craving for Spring

I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets of exquisite finality;
Come, spring, make havoc of them!

I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasure to tread down the jonquils,
to destroy the chill Lent lilies;
for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness,
slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.

I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring,
gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessential brightness,
rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent,
strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.

This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheat
and rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind;
the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads of fruit
temptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb and finger;
oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirls the pear-bloom,
upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot- and quince-blossom,
storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginable blossom
about our bewildered faces,
though we do not worship.

I wish it were spring
cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and ends of the old, scattered fire,
and kindling shapely little conflagrations
curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.

I wish that spring
would start the thundering traffic of feet
new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.

I wish it were spring, thundering
delicate, tender spring.
I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of passionate, mysterious corruption
were not yet to come still more from the still-flickering discontent.

Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for very exuberance,
exulting with secret warm excess,
bowed down with his inner magnificence!

Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enough
to toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jet
dancing sportfully;
as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squirt of water
for men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at a fair.

The gush of spring is strong enough
to play with the globe of earth like a ball on a fountain;
At the same time it opens the tiny hands of the hazel
with such infinite patience.
The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sap could take the earth
and heave it off among the stars, into the invisible;
the same sets the throstle at sunset on a bough
singing against the blackbird;
comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose,
and betrays its candour in the round white strawberry flower,
is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indian brave.

Ah come, come quickly, spring!
come and lift us towards our culmination, we myriads;
we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.
Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us to our summer,
we who are winter-weary in the winter of the of the world.
Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,
come and soften the willow buds till they are puffed and furred,
then blow them over with gold.
Coma and cajole the gawky colt’s-foot flowers.

Come quickly, and vindicate us
against too much death.
Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the world from within,
burst it with germination, with world anew.
Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot flower from the ice.
All the world gleams with the lilies of Death the Unconquerable,
but come, give us our turn.
Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption,
no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation
piercing the flesh to blossom of death.
Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business
of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy.
Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour strike,
O soon, soon!
Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.
Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet,
incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man.

Are the violets already here!
Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even now
on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.
Show me the violets that are out.

Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with violets,
if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and fallen,
we shall have spring.
Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with violets.
Pray to live through.
If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man
it will be spring in the world,
it will be spring in the world of the living;
wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,
stirring of new seasons.

Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation!
Worse, let me not deceive myself.

~~
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
from Look! We have come through!, 1919

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

D.H. Lawrence biography

Saturday, March 13, 2021

March Thought / Hilda Conkling


March Thought

I am waiting for the flowers
To come back:
I am alone,
But I can wait for the birds.

~~
Hilda Conkling (1910-1986)
from
Poems by a Little Girl, 1920

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

Max Liebermann (1847–1935), Holländisches Bauernhaus mit Kind.
Public domain, Wikipedia Commons

Hilda Conkling biography

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Dear March - Come in / Emily Dickinson


[1320]

Dear March - Come in -
How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat -
You must have walked -
How out of Breath you are -
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -
Did you leave Nature well -
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -
I have so much to tell -

I got your Letter, and the Birds -
The Maples never knew that you were coming -
I declare - how Red their Faces grew -
But March, forgive me -
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue -
There was no Purple suitable -
You took it all with you -

Who knocks? That April -
Lock the Door -
I will not be pursued -
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied -
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame -

~~
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]


"Dear March - Come In" read by Jessica Schad Manuel

Saturday, March 6, 2021

March / William Cullen Bryant


March

The stormy March is come at last,
     With wind, and cloud, and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast,
     That through the snowy valley flies.

Ah, passing few are they who speak,
     Wild stormy month! in praise of thee;
Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak,
     Thou art a welcome month to me.

For thou, to northern lands again,
     The glad and glorious sun dost bring,
And thou hast joined the gentle train
     And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.

And, in thy reign of blast and storm,
     Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day,
When the changed winds are soft and warm,
     And heaven puts on the blue of May.

Then sing aloud the gushing rills
     And the full springs, from frost set free,
That, brightly leaping down the hills,
     Are just set out to meet the sea.

The year's departing beauty hides
    Of wintry storms the sullen threat;
But, in thy sternest frown abides
     A look of kindly promise yet.

Thou bring'st the hope of those calm skies,
     And that soft time of sunny showers,
When the wide bloom, that on earth lies,
     Seems of a brighter world than ours.

~~
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
From
Poems, 1836

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Cullen Bryant biography

Monday, March 1, 2021

Penny's Top 20 / February 2021

   

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Skating, William Wordsworth
  2.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3.  February: An elegy, Thomas Chatterton
  4.  Sonnet 1977, Will Dockery
  5.  The February Hush, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
  6.  False February, John Payne
  7.  The Thrush in February, George Meredith
  8.  When I too long have looked upon your face, Edna St. Vincent Millay
  9.  February, Michael Field
10.  The Brook in February, Charles G.D. Roberts

11.  A Miracle, George J. Dance
12.  Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens
13.  February: A pastoral poem, William Perfect
14.  The World's Body, AE Reiff
15.  United Dames of America, Wallace Stevens
16.  Winter Field, A.E. Coppard
17.  Green, Paul Verlaine
18.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
19.  Summer Song, William Carlos Williams
20. By the Sea, Christina Rosetti

Source: Blogger, "Stats"