Late February / William Morris

from The Earthly Paradise:

Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that winter's woe was past;
So fair the sky was, and so soft the air.
The happy birds were hurrying here and there,
As something soon would happen. Reddened now
The hedges, and in gardens many a bough
Was overbold of buds. Sweet days, indeed,
Although past road and bridge, through wood and mead, 

Swift ran the brown stream, swirling by the grass,
And in the hillside hollows snow yet was.

~~
William Morris (1834-1896)
from Through the Year with the Poets: February, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Morris biography

Evelyn Simak, Horsford Woods in Late February, 20ll. CC BY-SA 2,0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Manor Farm / Edward Thomas

The Manor Farm

The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;
Nor did I value that thin gilding beam
More than a pretty February thing
Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,
And church and yew-tree opposite, in age
Its equals and in size. The church and yew
And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness.
The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof,
With tiles duskily glowing, entertained
The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof
White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one.
Three cart-horses were looking over a gate
Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails
Against a fly, a solitary fly.

The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained
Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught
And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter —
Rather a season of bliss unchangeable
Awakened from farm and church where it had lain
Safe under tile and thatch for ages since
This England, Old already, was called Merry.

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Poems, 1917.

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Thomas biography

"The Manor Farm" read by Audiobook Passion.

February / George J. Dance

February

Unnoticed beauty:
ocean waves in winter,
the curve of your cheek.

~~
George J. Dance, 2023

Ronnie Robertson, Gutness Voe on a winter day, 2014. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

["February" by George J. Dance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International license.]

George J. Dance biography

For My Darling / Archibald Lampman

from The Growth of Love

Hans Makart (1840-1885),

 Lady in a White Dress.
Wikimedia Commons.

    II – For My Darling

My lady is not learned in many books,
    Nor hath much love for grave discourses strung
    With gaudy similes, for she is young,
And full of merry pranks and laughing looks.
But yet her heart hath many tender nooks
    Of fervour and sweet charity; her tongue,
    For all its laughter, yet is often wrung
With soft compassion for life's painful crooks.

I love my lady for her lovely face,
    And for her mouth, and for her eyes, and hair;
More still I love her for her laughing grace,
    And for her wayward ways, and changeful air;
But most of all love gaineth ground apace,
    Because my lady's heart is pure and fair.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1885
from At the Long Sault, and other new poems, 1943

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Archibald Lampman biography

My soul is an enchanted boat / Percy Bysshe Shelley

from Prometheus Unbound:

Asia:
    My soul is an enchanted boat,
    Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
    And thine doth like an angel sit
    Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
    It seems to float ever, forever,    
    Upon that many-winding river,
    Between mountains, woods, abysses,
    A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound.

    Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
    In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
    And we sail on, away, afar,
    Without a course, without a star,
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
    Till through Elysian garden islets
    By thee most beautiful of pilots,
    Where never mortal pinnace glided,
    The boat of my desire is guided;
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

    We have passed Age's icy caves,
    And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray;
    Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
    Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
    A paradise of vaulted bowers
    Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
    And watery paths that wind between
    Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!

~~
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
from Prometheus Unbound, with other poems, 1820

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Percy Bysshe Shelley biography

"My soul is an enchanted boat" read by Vincent Price. Courtesy Vincent Price - Topic. 

love is more thicker than forget / E.E. Cummings

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

~~
E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)
from Poetry, January 1939

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

E.E. Cummings biography

 "love is more thicker than forget" read by E.E. Cummings. Courtesy Poets Speak.

February / Edwin Arnold

from The Twelve Months

 
February

Fair Grecian legend, that, in Spring,
Seeking sweet tale for sunnier hours,
Fabled how Enna's queen did bring
Back from the underworld her flowers!

Whence come ye else, goblets of gold,
Which men the yellow crocus call ?
You snow-drops, maiden-meek and cold,
What other fingers let you fall?

What hand but hers, who, wont to rove
The asphodel in Himera,
Torn thence by an ungentle love,
Flung not her favourites away?

King of dark death! on thoughts that roam
Thy passion and thy power were spent:
When blossom-time is clue at home,
Homeward the soul's strong wings are bent.

So comes she. with her pleasant wont,
When Spring-time chases Winter cold,
Couching against his frozen front
Her tiny spears of green and gold.

~~

Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)

from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edwin Arnold biography

Ziegler175, Burgfelden Krokus, 1983. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

There Blooms No Bud in May / Walter de la Mare

There Blooms No Bud in May

 
There blooms no bud in May
Can for its white compare
With snow at break of day,
On fields forlorn and bare.

For shadow it hath rose,
Azure, and amethyst;
And every air that blows
Dies out in beauteous mist.

It hangs the frozen bough
With flowers on which the night
Wheeling her darkness through
Scatters a starry light.

Fearful of its pale glare
In flocks the starlings rise;
Slide through the frosty air,
And perch with plaintive cries.

Only the inky rook,
Hunched cold in ruffled wings,
Its snowy nest forsook,
Caws of unnumbered Springs.

~~
Walter de la Mare
From The Listeners, and other poems, 1912

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

Walter de la Mare biography

Jon Barton, Snow at Morning Hill, Peebles, UK, 2018. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

February the First on the Prairies / Wilson MacDonald

February the First on the Prairies

The page is snowy white, the pen is dipped,
And yet unwritten is this manuscript —
Save for a scattered letter leagues apart.

But through this frail beginning I can peer
On days when all this wilderness shall hear
The rhythmic throbbings of the human heart.

The heavens are bare; no clouds are on her face
To make the laggard sun increase his pace
Above the rusted hillocks bare and red.

The yellow straw-pipes, spearing through the ice,
Are lovely from an ancient sacrifice;
They gave and hear the nations breaking bread.

The prairie lands are spread to-day for me
Like frozen billows on a pulseless sea
That waits the golden wheat’s releasing tide.

Here, in his largest mood, the artist tries
To catch the amber glory with his dyes,
And sees, with aching soul, his task defied.

Bolder, the poet, with a stronger hand
Anoints with song this little-laurelled land,
Weaving the west winds wildly in his rune.

He sees the cattle stand with moveless tails,
And heads together, to outwit the gales
That blow the bronze of summer from the moon.

He sees, beside a ridge where poplars grow,
A bronco coldly nosing in the snow,
And gains the prairie vastness from his form.

He sees the patient straw-stack, brown with rain,
A giant, ripened mushroom of the plain
Whose stem is worn by rubbing flank and storm.

Here, while the blizzard aches its heart in sound,
The cattle move like driftwood, ’round and ’round,
Yea, ’round and ’round as in a whirlpool’s reach.

And, in a nook that lulls the wilder whine,
A shaggy bush claims kinship with the pine
And meets the gale with boldness in its speech;

Or, with a thought for some far woodland, dense,
Her branches wail against an old offense —
Complaining of the hoof that brought them here.

No lordly tree this land shall ever dare;
And yet, unfearful of their valiant fare,
Soon, in this vast, shall frailest flowers appear.

Where Might doth falter, Beauty enters in;
Where Pride shall fail, Humility shall win.
And this will be until the heavens are old.

And here, to prove the adage, I shall pass
When April kindles beauty in the grass
And warms these frozen fields with red and gold.

~~
Wilson MacDonald (1880-1967)
from Out of the Wilderness, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Wilson MacDonald biography

Jakub Fryš, Prairie of Alberta, February 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

February's featured poem

  

The Penny Blog's featured poem for February 2024:

The Winter Lakes, by William Wilfred Campbell

         

Out in a world of death far to the northward lying,

Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the day;

Under the glimmer of stars and the purple of sunsets dying,

Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes away.

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/01/winter-lakes-william-wilfred-campbell.html

Penny's Top 20 / January 2024

                                 

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in January 2024:

  1.  Auld Lang Syne, Robert Burns

  2.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  3.  Velvet Shoes, Elinor Wylie

  4.  The Old Year out and the New Year in, Augusta Webster

  5.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  6.  To a Thrush Singing in January, John Keble
  7.  January, James Russell Lowell

  8.  Manitoba Childe Roland, Carl Sandburg
  9.  A Scroll, George J. Dance

10.  Night Rain, Christopher Mercon

11.  We Like the Winter and Its Snows, James Berry Bensel
12.  January, Edwin Arnold
13.  A Song of Winter, Emily Pfeiffer

14.  Spring Rains, George Sulzbach
15.  Hockey War, David Pekrul

16.  Talking in their Sleep, Edith M. Thomas

17.  January, Rebecca Hey

18.  January, Ruby Archer
19.  Good Riddance, but Now What?, Ogden Nash

20.  The Brook in February, Charles G.D. Roberts

Source: Blogger, "Stats"