Pages

Saturday, December 31, 2022

New Year's Eve / Charles G.D. Roberts


New Year's Eve

(after the French of Frechette)

Ye night winds shaking the weighted boughs
    Of snow-blanched hemlock and frosted fir,
While crackles sharply the thin crust under
    The passing feet of the wayfarer;

Ye night cries pulsing in long-drawn waves
    Where beats the bitter tide to its flood;
A tumult of pain, a rumour of sorrow,
    Troubling the starred night's tranquil mood.
;
Ye shudderings where, like a great beast bound,
    The forest strains to its depths remote;
Be still and hark! From the high gray tower
    The great bell sobs in its brazen throat.

A strange voice out of the pallid heaven,
    Twelve sobs it utters, and stops. Midnight!
Tis the ominous Hail! and the stern Farewell!
    Of Past and Present in passing flight.

This moment, herald of hope and doom,
    That cries in our ears and then is gone,
Has marked for us in the awful volume
    One step toward the infinite dark — or dawn!

A year is gone, and a year begins.
    Ye wise ones, knowing in Nature's scheme,
Oh tell us whither they go, the years
    That drop in the gulfs of time and dream!

They go to the goal of all things mortal,
    Where fade our destinies, scarce perceived,
To the dim abyss wherein time confounds them —
    The hours we laughed and the days we grieved.

They go where the bubbles of rainbow break
    We breathed in our youth of love and fame,
Where great and small are as one together,
    And oak and windflower counted the same.

They go where follow our smiles and tears,
    The gold of youth and the gray of age,
Where falls the storm and falls the stillness,
    The laughter of spring and winter's rage.

What hand shall gauge the depth of time
    Or a little measure eternity?
God only, as they unroll before Him,
    Conceives and orders the mystery.

~~
Charles G.D. Roberts (1860-1943)
from Songs of the Common Day, 1893

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

Charles G.D. Roberts biography

Michal Osmenda, Wintery Midnight, 2010. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Love came down at Christmas / Christina Rossetti


Christmastide

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from Verses, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide.]

Christina Rossetti biography

Jars of Clay, "Love Came Down at Christmas," 2007.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

A Christmas Childhood / Patrick Kavanagh


A Christmas Childhood

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost –
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven’s gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw –
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me.

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood’s. Again.

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch,
Or any common sight, the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy’s hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon — the Three Wise Kings.

And old man passing said:
‘Can’t he make it talk –
The melodion.’ I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife’s big blade –
there was a little one for cutting tobacco.
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodion,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

~~
Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)
from 
A Soul for Sale, 1947

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada
]


Cathar 11, Inniskeen Round Tower, 2009. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Sunday, December 18, 2022

December / Ina Coolbrith


December

Now the summer all is over!
We have wandered through the clover,
We have plucked in wood and lea
Blue-bell and anemone.

We were children of the sun,
Very brown to look upon:
We were stainéd, hands and lips,
With the berries' juicy tips.

And I think that we may know
Where the rankest nettles grow,
And where oak and ivy weave
Crimson glories to deceive.

Now the merry days are over!
Woodland-tenants seek their cover,
And the swallow leaves again
For his castle-nests in Spain.

Shut the door, and close the blind:
We shall have the bitter wind,
We shall have the dreary rain
Striving, driving at the pane.

Send the ruddy fire-light higher;
Draw your easy chair up nigher;
Through the winter, bleak and chill,
We may have our summer still.

Here are poems we may read,
Pleasant fancies to our need:
Ah, eternal summer-time
Dwells within the poet's rhyme!

All the birds' sweet melodies
Linger in these songs of his;
And the blossoms of all ages
Waft their fragrance from his pages.

~~
Ina Coolbrith (1841-1928)

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

Ina Coolbrith biography

Hannah Shea, Rainy Cabin, Pinterest

Saturday, December 17, 2022

A December Day / J.A. Kerr


A December Day

Low-drifting clouds o'erspread the sky;
    The day is dull, the landscape drear;
On earth's fair bosom snowflakes lie,
    While trees their snow-clad branches rear.

From lowering clouds the winter rain,
    Cheerless, descends no longer, now;
To patter loud on roof and pane,
    But falls the dancing flakes of snow.

The birds give forth no notes of cheer,
    For they have flown. The woods are still;
The fields are shorn, and brown, and sear;
    Ice-bound are river, brook and rill.

All nature seems grown gray with rime,
    And longs for rest — to die, to sleep;
Like man, woos sweet rest, courts decline,
    And feels the death-chill o'er her creep.

Her race seems short, and almost run:
    Her knell is tolled by pattering hail.
In clouds of crepe is clad the sun;
    The wind gives forth a moaning wall.

The earth seems wrapped in her last sleep —
    All nature robed in shrouds of snow.
The lowering clouds in pity weep,
    That she, like man, is thus laid low.

~~
J.A. Kerr
from Local and National Poets of America, 1890

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

J.A. Kerr biography

Luigi Loir (1845-1916), Avenue de Neuilly on a Winter Day, 1874. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Sunday, December 11, 2022

December / Thomas Bailey Aldrich


December

Only the sea intoning,
Only the wainscot-mouse,
Only the wild wind moaning
Over the lonely house.

Darkest of all Decembers
Ever my life has known,
Sitting here by the embers,
Stunned and helpless, alone —

Dreaming of two graves lying
Out in the damp and chill:
One where the buzzard, flying,
Pauses at Malvern Hill;

The other—alas! the pillows
Of that uneasy bed
Rise and fall with the billows
Over our sailor's head.

Theirs the heroic story —
Died, by frigate and town!
Theirs the Calm and the Glory,
Theirs the Cross and the Crown.

Mine to linger and languish
Here by the wintry sea.
Ah, faint heart! in thy anguish,
What is there left to thee?

Only the sea intoning,
Only the wainscot-mouse,
Only the wild wind moaning
Over the lonely house.

~~
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)
from 
Poems, 1885

[Poem is in the public domain world-wide]

Thomas Bailey Aldrich biography

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907). Courtesy American Literature.

Saturday, December 10, 2022

Come, come thou bleak December wind /
Samuel Taylor Coleridge


[Fragment 3]

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.

~~
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
from Complete Poetical Works,  1912

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge biography

John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind, 1892. Wikimedia Commons

Sunday, December 4, 2022

December / Edmund Spenser (1)

from The Shepheardes Calender1579:

December. Ægloga Duodecima.

ARGUMENT. This Æglogue (even as the first beganne) is ended with a complaynte of Colin to God Pan: wherein, as weary of his former wayes, he proportioneth his life to the foure seasons of the yeare, comparing hys youthe to the spring time, when he was fresh and free from loves follye; his manhoode to the sommer, which, he sayth, was consumed with greate heate and excessive drouth, caused throughe a comet or blasinge starre, by which hee meaneth love, which passion is comenly compared to such flames and immoderate heate; his riper yeares hee resembleth to an unseasonable harveste, wherein the fruites fall ere they be rype; his latter age to winters chyll and frostie season, now drawing neare to his last ende.


 The gentle shepheard satte beside a springe,
All in the shadowe of a bushye brere,
That Colin hight, which wel could pype and singe,
For he of Tityrus his songs did lere.
There as he satte in secreate shade alone,
Thus gan he make of love his piteous mone.

‘O soveraigne Pan, thou god of shepheards all,
Which of our tender lambkins takest keepe,
And when our flocks into mischaunce mought fall,
Doest save from mischiefe the unwary sheepe,
Als of their maisters hast no lesse regard
Then of the flocks, which thou doest watch and ward:

‘I thee beseche (so be thou deigne to heare
Rude ditties, tund to shepheards oaten reede,
Or if I ever sonet song so cleare
As it with pleasaunce mought thy fancie feede)
Hearken awhile, from thy greene cabinet,
The rurall song of carefull Colinet.

‘Whilome in youth, when flowrd my joyfull spring,
Like swallow swift I wandred here and there:
For heate of heedlesse lust me so did sting,
That I of doubted daunger had no feare.
I went the wastefull woodes and forest wyde,
Withouten dreade of wolves to bene espyed.

‘I wont to raunge amydde the mazie thickette,
And gather nuttes to make me Christmas game;
And joyed oft to chace the trembling pricket,
Or hunt the hartlesse hare til shee were tame.
What recked I of wintrye ages waste?
Tho deemed I, my spring would ever laste.

‘How often have I scaled the craggie oke,
All to dislodge the raven of her nest!
Howe have I wearied, with many a stroke,
The stately walnut tree, the while the rest
Under the tree fell all for nuts at strife!
For ylike to me was libertee and lyfe.

‘And for I was in thilke same looser yeares,
(Whether the Muse so wrought me from my birth,
Or I to much beleeved my shepherd peres,)
Somedele ybent to song and musicks mirth,
A good olde shephearde, Wrenock was his name,
Made me by arte more cunning in the same.

‘Fro thence I durst in derring doe compare
With shepheards swayne what ever fedde in field:
And if that Hobbinol right judgement bare,
To Pan his owne selfe pype I neede not yield:
For if the flocking nymphes did folow Pan,
The wiser Muses after Colin ranne.

‘But ah! such pryde at length was ill repayde:
The shepheards god (perdie, god was he none)
My hurtlesse pleasaunce did me ill upbraide;
My freedome lorne, my life he lefte to mone.
Love they him called that gave me checkmate,
But better mought they have behote him Hate.

‘Tho gan my lovely spring bid me farewel,
And sommer season sped him to display
(For Love then in the Lyons house did dwell)
The raging fyre that kindled at his ray.
A comett stird up that unkindly heate,
That reigned (as men sayd) in Venus seate.

‘Forth was I ledde, not as I wont afore,
When choise I had to choose my wandring waye,
But whether Luck and Loves unbridled lore
Would leade me forth on Fancies bitte to playe.
The bush my bedde, the bramble was my bowre,
The woodes can witnesse many a wofull stowre.

‘Where I was wont to seeke the honey bee,
Working her formall rowmes in wexen frame,
The grieslie todestoole growne there mought I se,
And loathed paddocks lording on the same:
And where the chaunting birds luld me a sleepe,
The ghastlie owle her grievous ynne doth keepe.

[continued in part 2 . . .]

Saturday, December 3, 2022

December / Edmund Spenser (2)

from The Shepheardes Calender, 1579:

December  [. . . continued from part 1]

‘Then as the springe gives place to elder time,
And bringeth forth the fruite of sommers pryde,
Also my age, now passed youngthly pryme,
To thinges of ryper reason selfe applyed,
And learnd of lighter timber cotes to frame,
Such as might save my sheepe and me fro shame.

‘To make fine cages for the nightingale,
And baskets of bulrushes, was my wont:
Who to entrappe the fish in winding sale
Was better seene, or hurtful beastes to hont?
I learned als the signes of heaven to ken,
How Phœbe fayles, where Venus sittes and when.

‘And tryed time yet taught me greater thinges:
The sodain rysing of the raging seas,
The soothe of byrds by beating of their wings,
The power of herbs, both which can hurt and ease,
And which be wont tenrage the restlesse sheepe,
And which be wont to worke eternall sleepe.

‘But ah, unwise and witlesse Colin Cloute!
That kydst the hidden kinds of many a wede,
Yet kydst not ene to cure thy sore hart roote,
Whose ranckling wound as yet does rifelye bleede!
Why livest thou stil, and yet hast thy deathes wound?
Why dyest thou stil, and yet alive art founde?

‘Thus is my sommer worne away and wasted,
Thus is my harvest hastened all to rathe:
The eare that budded faire is burnt and blasted,
And all my hoped gaine is turnd to scathe.
Of all the seede that in my youth was sowne,
Was nought but brakes and brambles to be mowne.

‘My boughes with bloosmes that crowned were at firste,
And promised of timely fruite such store,
Are left both bare and barrein now at erst:
The flattring fruite is fallen to grownd before,
And rotted ere they were halfe mellow ripe:
My harvest, wast, my hope away dyd wipe.

‘The fragrant flowres that in my garden grewe
Bene withered, as they had bene gathered long:
Theyr rootes bene dryed up for lacke of dewe,
Yet dewed with teares they han be ever among.
Ah! who has wrought my Rosalind this spight,
To spil the flowres that should her girlond dight?

‘And I, that whilome wont to frame my pype
Unto the shifting of the shepheards foote,
Sike follies nowe have gathered as too ripe,
And cast hem out as rotten and unsoote.
The loser lasse I cast to please nomore:
One if I please, enough is me therefore.

‘And thus of all my harvest hope I have
Nought reaped but a weedye crop of care:
Which, when I thought have thresht in swelling sheave,
Cockel for corne, and chaffe for barley, bare.
Soone as the chaffe should in the fan be fynd,
All was blowne away of the wavering wynd.

‘So now my yeare drawes to his latter terme,
My spring is spent, my sommer burnt up quite,
My harveste hasts to stirre up Winter sterne,
And bids him clayme with rigorous rage hys right:
So nowe he stormes with many a sturdy stoure,
So now his blustring blast eche coste doth scoure.

‘The carefull cold hath nypt my rugged rynde,
And in my face deepe furrowes eld hath pight:
My head besprent with hoary frost I fynd,
And by myne eie the crow his clawe dooth wright.
Delight is layd abedde, and pleasure past;
No sonne now shines, cloudes han all overcast.

‘Now leave, ye shepheards boyes, your merry glee;
My Muse is hoarse and weary of thys stounde:
Here will I hang my pype upon this tree;
Was never pype of reede did better sounde.
Winter is come, that blowes the bitter blaste,
And after winter dreerie death does hast.

‘Gather ye together, my little flocke,
My little flock, that was to me so liefe:
Let me, ah! lette me in your folds ye lock,
Ere the breme winter breede you greater griefe.
Winter is come, that blowes the balefull breath,
And after winter commeth timely death.

‘Adieu, delightes, that lulled me asleepe;
Adieu, my deare, whose love I bought so deare;
Adieu, my little lambes and loved sheepe;
Adieu, ye woodes, that oft my witnesse were;
Adieu, good Hobbinol, that was so true:
Tell Rosalind her Colin bids her adieu.’

~~
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
from Complete Poetical Works, 1908

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Penny's Top 20 / November 2022

                    

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in November 2022:

  1.  November, Edmund Spenser
  2.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3.  November, Amy Lowell
  4.  Believe It or Not, George J. Dance
  5.  The Dwarf, Walllace Stevens
  6.  The Call, Jessie Pope
  7.  Men Who March Away, Thomas Hardy
  8.  Moonlight Alert, Yvor Winters
  9.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens
10.  November Rain, Ellen P. Allerton

11.  Dead Leaves, E. Nesbit
12.  Skating, William Wordsworth
13.  November Evening, Lucy Maud Montgomery
14.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
15.  No!, Thomas Hood
16.  November, Robert Bridges
17.  Poem with Rhythms, Wallace Stevens
18.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin
19.  Card Game, Frank Prewett
20. Hockey War, David Pekrul

Source: Blogger, "Stats"