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Sunday, May 28, 2023

May Day / Sara Teasdale


May Day

A delicate fabric of bird song
    Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
    Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple
    Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
    The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by
    Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
    The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure
    I shall see again
The world on the first of May
    Shining after the rain?

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

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

Sara Teasdale biography

"May Day" (read by Annie Coleman). Courtesy YouTube.

Saturday, May 27, 2023

The Hymn to May / Nathaniel Evans


                                     George Auriol (1863-1938), Mai, 1912, Public domain, Wikmedia Commons.

     
            The Hymn to May

            I

            Now had the beam of Titan gay
            Usher’d in the blissful May,
            Scattering from his pearly bed,
            Fresh dew on every mountain’s head;
            Nature mild and debonair,
            To thee, fair maid, yields up her care.
            May, with gentle plastic hand,
            Clothes in flowery robe the land;
            O’er the vales the cowslip spreads,
            And eglantine beneath the shades;
            Violets blue befringe each fountain,
            Woodbines lace each steepy mountain;
            Hyacinths their sweets diffuse,
            And the rose its blush renews;
            With the rest of Flora’s train,
            Decking lowly dale or plain.


            II

            Thro' creation’s range, sweet May!
            Nature’s children own thy sway —
            Whether in the crystal flood,
            Amorous, sport the finny brood;
            Or the feather’d tribes declare,
            That they breathe thy genial air,
            While they warble in each grove
            Sweetest notes of artless love;
            Or their wound the beasts proclaim,
            Smitten with a fiercer flame;
            Or the passions higher rise,
            Sparing none beneath the skies,
            But swaying soft the human mind
            With feelings of ecstatic kind —
            Through wide creation’s range, sweet May!
            All nature’s children own thy sway.


            III

            Oft will I, (e’er Phosphor’s light
            Quits the glimmering skirts of night)
            Meet thee in the clover field,
            Where thy beauties thou shalt yield
            To my fancy, quick and warm,
            Listening to the dawn’s alarm,
            Sounded loud by Chanticleer,
            In peals that sharply pierce the ear.
            And, as Sol his flaming car
            Urges up the vaulted air,
            Shunning quick the scorching ray,
            I will to some covert stray,
            Coolly bowers or latent dells,
            Where light-footed silence dwells,
            And whispers to my heaven-born dream,
            Fair Schuylkill, by thy winding stream!
            There I ’ll devote full many an hour,
            To the still-finger’d Morphean power,
            And entertain my thirsty soul
            With draughts from Fancy’s fairy bowl;
            Or mount her orb of varied hue,
            And scenes of heaven and earth review.


            IV

            Nor in milder eve’s decline,
            As the sun forgets to shine,
            And sloping down the ethereal plain,
            Plunges in the western main,
            Will I forbear due strain to pay
            To the song-inspiring May;
            But as Hesper ’gins to move
            Round the radiant court of Jove,
            (Leading through the azure sky
            All the starry progeny,
            Emitting prone their silver light,
            To re-illume the shades of night)
            Then, the dewy lawn along,
            I ’ll carol forth my grateful song,
            Viewing with transported eye
            The blazing orbs that roll on high,
            Beaming lustre, bright and clear,
            O’er the glowing hemisphere.
            Thus from the early blushing morn,
            Till the dappled eve’s return,
            Will I, in free unlabor’d lay,
            Sweetly sing the charming May!

            ~~
            Nathaniel Evans (1742-1767)
            from Poems on Several Occasions, 1772

            [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

            Nathaniel Evans biography

Sunday, May 21, 2023

Ode on the Spring / Thomas Gray


Ode

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours,
Fair Venus' train appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,
The untaught harmony of spring:
While whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky
Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade;
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclin'd in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care:
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of man:
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay
But flutter thro' life's little day,
In fortune's varying colours drest:
Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chill'd by age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear in accents low
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glitt'ring female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone —
We frolic, while 'tis May.

~~
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
from Poems by Mr. Gray, 1768

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Gray biography 

"Ode on the Spring" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy YouTube.

Saturday, May 20, 2023

May / David Atwood Wasson


May

The green blades are springing,
        The glad birds are singing,
The sunlight is laughing o'er forest and lea;
        And the heart in my bosom
        Expands in each blossom,
It grows in the grass, and it sings from the tree.

        Is it true, the sweet feeling
        Through every vein stealing?
Am I there, do I live in the breath of the spring?
        In the many-voiced carol
        And the sward s green apparel?
In the far-flying shine is my soul on the wing?

        O Life! many-sided,
        But never divided,
Here hid in a bud, there bright in the sun,
        I live in thy flowing:
        Thy thought is my knowing:
The blossom, the bird, and mv heart, thev are one.
~~
David Atwood Wasson (1823-1887)
from Poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

David Atwood Wasson biography

Michael Martin, May Morning, 2014. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Sunday, May 14, 2023

Mother to Son / Langston Hughes


Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now —
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

~~
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
from The Weary Blues, 1926

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

Langston Hughes biography

"Mother to Son" read by Viola Davis Courtesy Youtube.

Saturday, May 13, 2023

May / H. Cordelia Ray



Sophie Anderson (1823-1903), Take the Fair Face
 of Women...Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
May 

Sweet winsome May, coy pensive fay,
     Comes garlanded with lily bells,
And apple blooms shed incense through the bow'r,
     To be her dow'r;
     While through the leafy dells
     A wondrous concert swells
To welcome May, the dainty fay.


~~
H. Cordelia Ray (1852-1916)
from Poems, 1910

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Sunday, May 7, 2023

In Early May / Bliss Carman


In Early May

O my dear, the world to-day
Is more lovely than a dream!
Magic hints from far away
Haunt the woodland, and the stream
Murmurs in his rocky bed
Things that never can be said.

Starry dogwood is in flower,
Gleaming through the mystic woods.
It is beauty's perfect hour
In the wild spring solitudes.
Now the orchards in full blow
Shed their petals white as snow.

All the air is honey-sweet
With the lilacs white and red,
Where the blossoming branches meet
In an arbor overhead.
And the laden cherry trees
Murmur with the hum of bees.

All the earth is fairy green,
And the sunlight filmy gold,
Full of ecstasies unseen,
Full of mysteries untold.
Who would not be out-of-door,
Now the spring is here once more!

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

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

Bliss Carman biography

"In Early May" read by Jane Elizabeth. Courtesy YouTube.

Saturday, May 6, 2023

May Day / Thomas MacDonagh


May Day

I wish I were to-day on the hill behind the wood,–
My eyes on the brown bog there and the Shannon river,–
Behind the wood at home, a quickened solitude
When the winds from Slieve Bloom set the branches there a-quiver.

The winds are there now and the green of May
On every feathery tree-bough, tender on every hedge:
Over the bog-fields there larks carol to-day,
And a cuckoo is mocking them out of the woodland's edge.

Here a country warmth is quiet on the rocks
That alone make never a change when the May is duly come;
Here sings no lark, and to-day no cuckoo mocks:
Over the wide hill a hawk floats, and the leaves are dumb.

~~
Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916)
from Poetical Works, 1916

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas MacDonagh biography

Oliver Dixon, River Shannon at Bellantra Bridge, May 2008. 

Thursday, May 4, 2023

May's featured poem


The Penny Blog's featured poem for May 2023:

Corinna's Going a-Maying, by Robert Herrick

[...]
Rise; and put on your Foliage, and be seen
To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and green
[...]

Monday, May 1, 2023

Penny's Top 20 / April 2023

                        

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in April 2023:

  1.  Spring Rains, George Sulzbach
  2.  Maye, Edmund Spenser
  3.  Card Game, Frank Prewett 
  4.  in Just-spring, E.E. Cummings
  5.  Skating, William Wordsworth
  6.  The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams
  7.  Ballad of the Goodly Fere, Ezra Pound
  8.  Mars & Avril, George J. Dance
  9.  A Morning Song (for the First Day of Spring), Eleanor Farjeon
10.  Good Friday, Christina Rossetti

11.  Wet Evening in April, Patrick Kavanagh
12.  An April Night, Lucy Maud Montgomery
13.  A Song for April, Charles G.D. Roberts
14.  June Rain, Richard Aldington
15.  The April Day, Caroline Bowles Southey
16.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
17.  April, H. Cordelia Ray
18.  Heat in the City, Charles G.D. Roberts 
19.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
20. Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

Source: Blogger, "Stats"