A June Day / Philip Bourke Marston

A June Day

The month is June, but all the sky is grey,
    And to the weary earth seems leaning low;
    There is no little breath of wind to blow
The searching perfume of these flowers away
Which climbing round the window peer and stay;
    The thrush sings, where the branches thickly grow;
    The day moves by, with heavy feet and slow;
"Death endeth all," the stillness seems to say.

But Love shall come before Death's nuptial hour;
    There sits my queen and silent, pondering what?
Sees she, as I, Love's joy-environed bower,
    Where sweet conspiring things one sweeter plot,
Or does she hear, 'neath some grave's guardian flower,
    Sad sighing of dead loves remembered not?

~~
Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887)
from Wind-voices, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Philip Bourke Marston biography

Keith Evans, Grey Skies, June 2011. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

June / Edwin Arnold

from The Twelve Months

June

Lily of June, pearl-petalled, emerald-leaved!
   A sceptre thou, a silver-studded wand
By lusty June, the Lord of Summer, waved,
   To give to blade and bud his high command.

Meneerke Bloem, Lilium 

candidum, 2012. CC BY-SA

 3,0, Wikimedia Commons.

Nay! not a sceptre, but a seated Bride,
   The white Sultana of a world of flowers.
Chosen, o'er all their passion and their pride,
   To reign with June, Lady of azure hours.

Ah, Vestal-bosomed! Thou that, all the May,
   From maidenly reserve wouldst not depart,
Till June's warm wooing won thee to display
   The golden secret hidden at thy heart:

Lay thy white heart bare to the Summer King!
   Brim thy broad chalice for him with fresh rain!
Fling to him from thy milky censers, fling
   Fine fragrances, a Bride without a stain!

Without?— look, June! thy pearly love is smutched!
   That which did wake her gentle beauty, slays;
Alas! that notliing lovely lasts, if touched
   By aught more earnest than a longing gaze.

~~

Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)

from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edwin Arnold biography

Lines to My Father / Countee Cullen

Lines to My Father

The many sow, but only the chosen reap;
Happy the wretched host if Day be brief,
That with the cool oblivion of sleep
A dawnless Night may soothe the smart of grief.

If from the soil our sweat enriches sprout
One meagre blossom for our hands to cull,
Accustomed indigence provokes a shout
Of praise that life becomes so bountiful.

Now ushered regally into your own,
Look where you will, as far as eye can see,
Your little seeds are to a fullness grown,
And golden fruit is ripe on every tree.

Yours is no fairy gift, no heritage
Without travail, to which weak wills aspire;
This is a merited and grief-earned wage
From One Who holds His servants worth their hire.

So has the shyest of your dreams come true,
Built not of sand, but of the solid rock,
Impregnable to all that may accrue
Of elemental rage: storm, stress, and shock.

~~
Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
from Copper Sun, 1927

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

Countee Cullen biography

Michael Barera, Apple Orchard, Wisconsin, 2022. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Early Summer / Ellwood Roberts

Early Summer

Full of joy is early Summer,
    Growth and warmth and golden light;
Every day is crowned with beauty,
    Full of loveliness the night.
Dazzling sunshine brings the roses,
    Fills the whole bright world with bloom;
Day and night rejoice together,
    Banished now are doubt and gloom.

Skies serene and loving woo us
    To the woods and fields to-day;
Who would linger long when Nature
    Calls him to her feast away?
Earth a veritable Eden
    In the glowing sunlight gleams,
Life a grand and noble epic,
    Viewed from such a standpoint seems.

Gladness reigns the wide world over,
    Early Summer's golden light
Fills each bosom with thanksgiving
    For the season's blessings bright.
Happy harvest days are coming,
    Full of joy, throughout the land;
Where the fields of grain are waving,
    Full-eared wheat in shocks shall stand.

Perfect days that pass too quickly,
    One by one they come and go,
Each in turn reveals rare blessing,
    Beauty passing all below.
Balmy air and bright green landscape,
    Glowing eve and dewy dawn;
Sunlight's gold on field and forest —
    We shall grieve when these are gone.

Joyous time to him that loveth
    Growth and warmth and golden light;
Day is full of blessed beauty,
    Full of peace the dewy night.
Early Summer! time of roses,
    All the earth is filled with bloom;
Every heart in thee rejoices,
    Banished now are doubt and gloom.

~~
Ellwood Roberts (1846-1921)
From Lyrics of Quakerism, and other poems, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ellwood Roberts biography

Logos (I. Liturgy) / George J. Dance

LOGOS

I. Liturgy

In the beginning, I remember
Turning to you in darkness
In the void
Your body without form
A darker mist beside me
And how there was no sin

How in the dusk your silhouette
Took shape and grew an arm 

Thrusting into the gloom
How then there was light
And we could see

And, not seeing, could hear
The staccato
Of rain above, the boom
Of nearby falls, and beyond,
Forever swelling,
The throb of the ocean ...

The way I dropped
As into sweet grass
In a clearing beneath
Cathedral pines thrusting,
To taste each berry,
To breathe every flower,
To sink as into living green to bleed

And how with the blood
Came the animal rising,
Standing, massing, chanting,
Pounding on the skin drum
Harder, my love, ever harder
My love
And how that was creation
And how that was new life
And how that was sin

And how there will be sin
Again tomorrow
The day of the dead god
Tomorrow, when you turn away
In silence and walk past
Tomorrow, when we will both feel torn
For words we could not find

But for now you rest. 

[continued...]

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Logos (II. Oblation) / George J. Dance

II. Oblation

“How
Could it be, a mere braincase
Knows anything of time and space?”
The darkness hovers, nearer now.
“How could a mind
Shine any light
On what no eye
Can ever see?”
The tide thrusts high
The swelling ocean,
Waves reach
Up invitingly
And the night
Spits an answer back:
“Wrap yourself in a public myth,
Stay blind
To how your mind
Is free –“
“– or drown yourself!” adds the glistening black
That slaps with
A dead hand on the beach;
A motion
That no living hand
Can grasp, no mind can understand.

[continued...]

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Logos (III. Consecration) / George J. Dance

III. Consecration

To watch the stillness in moving things;
Light, rock, water over rock,
How they have ascended from nothing;
To see the future tensed
Within a seed, a mind
the motion within the still;
To build and, building, rise
Creating from such nothing
The building rising from the rock,
Power from water bearing light;
To write in poems of carbon
Rising from mind the word –
        “Deus, ecce deus”
– the way these all emerge from nothing,
Permanence from void, the logos
Still within – now and forever
Movement and stillness
Ascending on the spiral,
Climbing the ancient winding stair
The fixed point always present, always still
Within the ascent;
It is of such things
That our myths are made:


[continued...]

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Logos (IV. Communion) / George J. Dance

IV. Communion 

[continued ...]

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Logos (V. Benediction) / George J. Dance

V. Benediction

Nothing was changed by the risen sun
Itself, yet all is enlightened since darkness fled:
The land behind me skull-white to be green,
Ahead grey ocean to be vivid aqua,
All at rest, all in motion, all of it
Particles in random chaos
Become molecules in rigid stasis,
So much from void; my eyes the very same
Giving it all the beauty,
My words the meaning,
My hearing the song. I am
The hub, the fixed point,
The still point without which there is no dance
And there is always the dance,
Movement and stillness ever entwined,
Now illuminated. Yet
Nothing is changed, no, nothing is new
But a new light over the sea; while on the sea
Another ship charts course, churning
Blades into spume, shearing
Prow through breakers, curling
Sheets of white water
Around the mewing gulls.

~~
George J. Dance, 1972-2021

from Logos, and other logoi, 2021

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June's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for June 2024:

A Day in June, by James Russell Lowell

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays
[...]

(read by Bethlehem Public Library)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/06/day-in-june-robert-lowell.html

Penny's Top 20 / May 2024

                                    

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  June Rain, Richard Aldington

  2.  Spring Morning, Frances Cornford

  3.  The Locust Tree in Flower, William Carlos Williams

  4.  To My Mother, Edgar Allan Poe

  5.  I Met the Rain, Louise Driscoll

  6.  Skating, William Wordsworth
  7.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  8.  May, Madison Cawein
  9.  Green Things Growing, Dinah Maria Craik

10.  May, Edwin Arnold

11.  Ode in May, William Watson
12.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

13.  August, Edmund Spenser

14.  Lament of the Irish Emigrant, Helen Selina Dufferin
15.  A Morning Song (for the First Day of Spring), Eleanor Farjeon

16.  Winter Song, Elizabeth Tollett

17.  May Evening in Central Park, Amy Lowell

18.  Summer Stars, Carl Sandburg
19.  Hockey War, David Pekrul

20. April Rain, Lew Sarett

Source: Blogger, "Stats"