Death as the Teacher of Love-Lore / Frank T. Marzials

Death as the Teacher of Love-Lore

'Twas in mid autumn, and the woods were still.
    A brooding mist from out the marshlands lay
    Like age’s clammy hand upon the day,
Soddening it;— and the night rose dank and chill.
I watched the sere leaves falling, falling, till
    Old thoughts, old hopes, seemed fluttering too away,
    And then I sighed to think how life’s decay,
And change, and time’s mischances, Love might kill.
Sudden a shadowy horseman, at full speed
    Spurring a pale horse, passed me swiftly by,
And mocking shrieked, “Thy love is dead indeed,
    Haste to the burial!”— With a bitter cry
I swooned, and wake to wonder at my creed,
    Learning from Death that Love can never die.

~~
Frank T. Marzials (1840-1912)
from Death's Disguises, and other sonnets, 1889

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Frank T. Marzials biography

Sawrey Gilpin (1733-1807), Death on a Pale Horse. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Theme in Yellow / Carl Sandburg

from Fog and Fire

Theme in Yellow

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am joking.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Chicago Poems, 1916

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Mirko S18, Jack-o'-lantern in Banovci, 2020. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

"Theme in Yellow" read by Zither P. Oxblood. Courtesy Graveyard Poetry.

Late Autumn / William Allingham

Late Autumn 

October and the skies are cool and gray
    O'er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf,
    Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf.
The dignity of woods in rich decay
    Accords full well with this majestic grief
That clothes our solemn purple hills to-day,
    Whose afternoon is hush'd, and wintry brief.
Only a robin sings from any spray.

And night sends up her pale cold moon, and spills
White mist around the hollows of the hills,
    Phantoms of firth or lake; the peasant sees
    His cot and stackyard, with the homestead trees,
Islanded: but no foolish terror thrills
    His perfect harvesting; he sleeps at ease.

~~
William Allingham (1824-1889)
from Poems, 1912

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Allingham biography

"Late Autumn" read by The Verse Place.

Autumn / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Autumn

With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life’s newness, and earth’s garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.

    There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves; the purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings;
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.

    O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.

~~
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
from Voices of the Night, 1839

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow biography

Paul VanDerWerf, Autumn Scene, October 2017 (detail). CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

In the slant sunlight of the young October / Alfred Austin

from Act I

    CXIV

In the slant sunlight of the young October,
Dew-dashed lay meadow, upland, wood, and pool;
Mid-time delicious, when all hues are sober,
All sounds an undertone, all airs are cool:
When Nature seems awhile to pause and probe her,
Asking her heart if her eventful rule
Hath blest the earth she loveth, and to brace her
Against the wintry darksome days that face her.

~~
Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
from The Human Tragedy, 1891

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alfred Austin biography

Christine Johnstone, Long Shadows Cast by Round Wood, 2016. 

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The feathers of the willow / Richard Watson Dixon

Song

The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow
    Above the swelling stream;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes,
    And wild the clouded gleam.

The thistle now is older,
His stalk begins to moulder,
    His head is white as snow;
The branches all are barer,
The linnet's song is rarer,
    The robin pipeth now.

~~
Richard Watson Dixon (1833-1900)
from Songs and Odes, 1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Richard Watson Dixon biography

Paul Lakin, Autumn Willow, November 2014. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

First Week in October / Charles Tennyson Turner

    CCIV

The First Week in October

Once on an autumn day as I reposed
Beneath a noonbeam, pallid yet not dull,
The branch above my head dipt itself full
Of that white sunshine momently, and closed;
While, ever and anon, the ashen keys
Dropt down beside the tarnished hollyhocks,
The scarlet cranesbill. and the faded stocks,
Flung from the shuffling leafage by the breeze.
How wistfully I marked the year's decay,
Forecasting all the dreary wind and rain;
'Twas the last week the swallow would remain.
How jealously I watched his circling play!
A few brief hours, and he would dart away,
No more to turn upon himself again.

~~
Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-1879) 
from Collected Sonnets, 1880 

 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Charles Tennyson Turner biography

                        Image from Studies in Reading, 1919. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

An October Afternoon / William Wilfred Campbell

An October Afternoon

The grey and silent sky above
    A rain-mist spins and weaves.
And underneath the sombre earth
    Is carpeted with leaves.

With solemn droppings, hour by hour,
    Great, still and ghostly arms
Point in a huddled, grotesque mood
    Across the eerie farms.

Between the sombre hill-side lands,
    Far out with vapours furled,
The mighty river like a dream,
    Goes winding down the world.

Above his silent, floating floor,
    That seems hke mist to rise,
Beyond the farmlands, out to north,
    The blue hills meet the skies.

Here all along the bare hill-side
    I hear, in dreams, the call
Of some lone jay, whose harmting note
    Bemoans him of the fall.

And in the browning woods above
    With slumberous, hollow sound,
At intervals the beechen nuts
    Go dropping to the ground.

Upon this silent afternoon
    The season seems to stand
Like one who muses with her book
    Of magic in her hand;

Nor dreams December’s maddened mood,
    Nor winter’s icy dart;
But simply drinks her elfin spell
    Back into her own heart.

~~
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

 

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1889),  An October Afternoon, 1871 (detail). 

Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

October / H. Cordelia Ray

October

The mellow moon hangs golden in the sky,
The vintage song is over, far and nigh
A richer beauty Nature weareth now,
And silently in reverence we bow
Before the forest altars, off'ring praise
To Him who sweetness gives to all our days.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

H. Cordelia Ray biography

Jonathan Billinger, Golden October, 2016. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

October's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for October 2023:

A Vagabond Song, by Bliss Carman

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood —
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
[...]

(read by Clarica)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2010/09/vagabond-song-bliss-carman.html

Penny's Top 20 / September 2023

                             

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Maye, Edmund Spenser

  2.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  3.  Sweet September Days, George W. Doneghy

  4.  Post Meridian, George J. Dance

  5.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
  6.  Darkling Summer, Ominous Dusk, Rumorous Rain, Delmore Schwartz
  7.  Further in Summer than the Birds, Emily Dickinson

  8.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
  9.  A Summer Day, Lucy Maud Montgomery

10.  You say you love, but with a voice, John Keats

11.  August, Edmund Spenser
12.  September, Edward Bliss Reed
13.  Song of the Summer Rain, Lilian Leveridge

14.  The Passing of Summer, James Berry Bensel
15.  September, H. Cordelia Ray

16.  Puella Parvula, Wallace Stevens

17.  Connecticut Autumn, Hyam Plutzik

18.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
19.  At the End of September, Sandor Petofi

20. March, Edmund Spenser

Source: Blogger, "Stats"