Fair was the morn to-day, the blossom's scent
Floated across the fresh grass, and the bees
With low vexed song from rose to lily went,
A gentle wind was in the heavy trees,
And thine eyes shone with joyous memories;
Fair was the early morn, and fair wert thou,
And I was happy, — Ah, be happy now!
Peace and content without us, love within
That hour there was, now thunder and wild rain,
Have wrapped the cowering world, and foolish sin,
And nameless pride, have made us wise in vain;
Ah. love! although the morn shall come again,
And on new rosebuds the new sun shall smile,
Can we regain what we have lost meanwhile?
E'en now the west grows clear of storm and threat,
But midst the lightning did the fair sun die:
Ah! he shall rise again for ages yet,
He cannot waste his life; but thou and I,
Who knows if next morn this felicity
My lips may feel, or if thou still shalt live
This seal of love renewed once more to give?
~~ William Morris (1834-1896) from Through the Year with the Poets: July
Walking down my street
she shakes her head
in the summer heat.
We met back at
Richards Junior High,
talking to the Grass-man
all about the Taxman.
I never wanted to
have to say goodbye. She walked right in into the morning of my life.
All around the curfew
barefoot in the wet dew,
we chased a dream
we could never realize.
Talking about Black Betty,
I felt like J. Paul Getty;
I never knew a kiss
could get me this high. She walked right past through the morning of my life.
When she sang that song to me,
her secret longing to be free,
on the corner
in soft summer rain.
Bought America in a jar,
filled with samples from afar.
I felt her vibe shake me
like a steam train. She walked right through deep in the morning of my life.
She shook me,
she really woke me up,
perfect sky
and her big blue eyes. She smiled my blues away.
Pretty baby, I wish
you could have stayed.
Then she kind of moved away;
life called
and we could not stay.
Sweet little lady
I think you've seen that movie too.
Saying goodbye to a friend
you never think it is the end.
I never thought
you were gone to stay. She walked right out out of the morning of my life.
A yellow-headed, gold-hammered, sunflower-lanterned
Summer afternoon: after the sun soared and soared
All morning to the marble shining heights of marvellous blue,
Like lions insurgent, bursting out of a great zoo,
As if all vividness poured down, poured out, poured
Over, bursting and breaking in all the altitudes of blaze,
As when the whole ocean rises and rises in irresistable motion, shaking;
The roar of the heart in a shell or the roar of the sea beyond the
concessions of possession and the secessions of time's fearful procession,
precious even in continuous perishing.
~~ Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) from Summer Knowledge: New and selected poems, 1959 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
Even in the bluest noonday of July,
There could not run the smallest breath of wind
But all the quarter sounded like a wood;
And in the chequered silence and above
The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois,
Suburban ashes shivered into song.
A patter and a chatter and a chirp
And a long dying hiss — it was as though
Starched old brocaded dames through all the house
Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky
Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain.
Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks
Of the near autumn, how the smitten ash
Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long
In these inconstant latitudes delay,
O not too late from the unbeloved north
Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof
Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes
Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms,
Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) from Underwoods, 1891
I am a Canadian,
a free Canadian,
free to speak without fear,
free to worship God in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
free to choose who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom
I pledge to uphold
for mysef and all mankind.
~~
John G. Diefenbaker (1895-1979)
Hansard, July 1, 1960
(a found poem)
In June I give you a close-wooded fell, With crowns of thicket coil'd about its head, With thirty villas twelve times turreted,
All girdling round a little citadel;
And in the midst a springhead and fair well With thousand conduits branch'd and shining speed, Wounding the garden and the tender mead,
Yet to the freshen'd grass acceptable.
And lemons, citrons, dates, and oranges, And all the fruits whose savour is most rare, Shall shine within the shadow of your trees; And every one shall be a lover there; Until your life, so fill'd with courtesies, Throughout the world be counted debonair.
~~ Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?) translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) from The Early Italian Poets, 1861
The very spirit of summer breathes to-day, Here where I sun me in a dreamy mood, And laps the sultry leas, and seems to brood
Tenderly o'er those hazed hills far away.
The murmurous air, fragrant of new-mown hay, Drowses, save when martins at gleeful feud, Gleam past in undulant flight. Yon hillside wood
Is drowned in sunshine, till its green looks grey,
No scrap of cloud is in the still blue sky, Vaporous with heat, from which the foreground trees Stand out, each leaf cut sharp. A whetted scythe
Makes rustic music for me as I lie, Glad in the mirth of distant children blithe, Drinking the season's sweetness to the lees.
~~ John Todhunter (1839-1916) from Laurella, and other poems, 1876
Thou orb aloft full dazzling,
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand;
Thou sibilant near sea, with vistas far, and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades, and spreading blue;
Before I sing the rest, O sun refulgent,
My special word to thee.
Hear me, illustrious!
Thy lover me — for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe—then happy boy alone by some wood edge — thy
touching distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old —a s now to thee I launch my invocation.
(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive.
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields.
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice—and thou,
O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame
gigantic,
I understand them — I know those flames, those perturbations well.)
Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O'er myriad forms — o'er lands and waters, North and South,
O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains, Kanada's woods,
O'er all the globe, that turns its face to thee, shining in space,
Thou that impartially enfoldest all — not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me — mellow these lines.
Fuse thyself here — with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions,
Strike through this chant.
Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for this;
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself — prepare my lengthening
shadows.
Prepare my starry nights.
~~ Walt Whitman (1819-1892) from The American, June 1881 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
Wane on, delicious days of shower and shine,
Cool, cloudy morns and noontides white and warm,
And eyes that melt in azure hyaline,
Wane to midsummer's long, lethean calm.
William Trost Richards (1833-1905), June Day, 1915. Wikimedia Commons.
For all the woods are shrill with stress of song,
Where soft wings flutter down to new-built nests,
And turbulent sweet sounds are heard day-long,
As of innumerable marriage feasts.
The flame of flowers is bright along the plain,
The hills are dim beneath pale, brooding skies;
And, like a kiss that thrills through every vein,
The warm wind, odor-laden, stirs and sighs,
Murmuring like music heard afar by night
From boats becalmed on star-illumined streams,
Sad as the memory of a lost delight,
Sweet as the voices that are heard in dreams.
Wane, siren days, and break the spell that wrings
The burdened breast with undefined regret,
Wayward desires, and vain imaginings,
The nameless longing, and the idle fret.
Wane on! ye wake the love that tempts and flies;
And where love is, thence peace departs full soon;
But, ah, how sweet love is, e'en though it dies
With thy last roses, O enchantress June !
~~
Charles Lotin Hildreth (1856-1896)
from The Masque of Death, and other poems, 1889
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
~~ Sylvia Plath (1932-1963}, 1962 from Ariel, and other poems, 1965 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
All along the shadowed lanes the Lilacs are in bloom
Up among the orchard trees, the birds are singing sweet,
All the earth has wakened up, roused from winter’s gloom,
O, the feel of the homeland soil once more beneath my feet.
White, the roads are leading on, beckoning to the hills,
Lying far and shadowless, iron-like and low,
All their beauty stirring me while their wonder fills
My heart with the old desire again and urges me to go.
~~
Arthur S. Bourinot (1893-1969)
from Lyrics from the Hills, 1923
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea,
And East and West the wander-thirst that will not let me be;
It works in me like madness, dear, to bid me say good-bye;
For the seas call, and the stars call, and oh! the call of the sky!
I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are;
But a man can have the sun for a friend, and for his guide a star;
And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the rivers call, and the roads call, and oh! the call of the bird!
Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;
And come I may, but go I must, and, if men ask you why,
You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky.
~~ Gerald Gould (1885-1936) from Lyrics, 1908
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
I give you horses for your games in May, And all of them well trained unto the course,– Each docile, swift, erect, a goodly horse;
With armor on their chests, and bells at play
Between their brows, and pennons fair and gay; Fine nets, and housings meet for warriors, Emblazoned with the shields ye claim for yours;
Gules, argent, or, all dizzy at noonday.
And spears shall split, and fruit go flying up
In merry counterchange for wreaths that drop From balconies and casements far above;
And tender damsels with young men and youths
Shall kiss together on the cheeks and mouths And every day be glad with joyful love.
~~ Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?) translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) from The Early Italian Poets, 1861
Three hours ago in Seven Dials
She lived awaiting all the trials
That haunt her race, but now shall be
Freed on the lawn to play with me.
In the dim shop her eyes were grey
And languid; but in this bright day
To a full circle each dilates,
And turns the blue of Worcester plates
In the unaccustomed sun; she stares
At strange fresh leaves; the passing airs,
Outstretching from her box's brink,
She gulps as if her nose could drink.
Now o'er the edge she scrambles slow,
Too pleased to know which way to go –
Half dazed with pleasure she explores
This sunny, eatable out-of-doors.
Then shakes and tosses up her ears
Like plumes upon bold cavaliers –
The dust flies out as catherine-wheels
Throw sparks as round she twirls and reels –
Her spine it quivers like an eel's –
Over her head she flings her heels,
Comes down askew, then waltzes till
She must reverse or else feel ill –
Reverses, then lies down and pants
As one who has no further wants,
Staring with half-believing eyes
Like souls that wake in Paradise.
~~ Camilla Doyle (1888-1944) from The Best Poems of 1923,1924
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap and birds did sing,
Trees did grow and plants did spring;
Everything did banish moan
Save the Nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all forlorn
Lean’d her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry;
Tereu, Tereu! by and by;
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs so lively shown
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah! thought I, thou mourn’st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee:
King Pandion he is dead,
All thy friends are lapp’d in lead;
All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.
~~
Richard Barnfield (1574-1627)
from the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900
(edited by Arthur Quiller Couch), 1918
Is this the sky, and this the very earth I had such pleasure in when I was young? And can this be the identical sea-song,
Heard once within the storm-cloud's awful girth,
When a great cloud from silence burst to birth; And winds to whom it seemed I did belong Made the keen blood in me run swift and strong
With irresistible, tempestuous mirth?
Are these the forests loved of old so well, Where on May nights enchanted music was? Are these the fields of soft, delicious grass;
These the old hills with secret things to tell?
O my dead youth, was this inevitable, That with thy passing, Nature, too, should pass?
~~ Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887) from Collected Poems, 1892 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
On Mulberry Drive
walking in the Spring rain.
Except for signs of a driveway
nothing else remains.
They took it all away
the house and the hill.
That spot we shared in '78
all the love and thrills.
Oblivion is coming
it's written in the stone.
It really starts out
on the day that you're born.
Live every second
dance what you've captured.
Shadowville Mythos...
is on the last chapter.
On Mulberry Drive
on another mystery play.
Almost fifty years ago
still seems like yesterday.
That long driveway
now goes into space.
We thought we'd live forever
not dead and disgraced.
Darkness is falling
archived in a book.
It really gets smaller
the closer you look.
Breathe deeply my darling
smoke them if you have to.
Shadowville Mythos...
is on the last chapter.
On Mulberry Drive
now the hail's coming down.
Taps on the umbrella
as I'm walking around.
I remember that fireplace
I remember her smile.
I remember Edgewood Park
where we'd laugh for a while.
In the living room
I heard a ghost moan,
As I talked with the Cavalier
on a land line telephone.
Relive every second
these memories you've captured.
Shadowville Mythos...
is on the last chapter.
Where shall we keep the holiday,
And duly greet the entering May?
Too strait and low our cottage doors,
And all unmeet our carpet floors;
Nor spacious court, nor monarch’s hall,
Suffice to hold the festival.
Up and away! where haughty woods
Front the liberated floods:
We will climb the broad-backed hills,
Hear the uproar of their joy;
We will mark the leaps and gleams
Of the new-delivered streams,
And the murmuring rivers of sap
Mount in the pipes of the trees,
Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,
Which for a spike of tender green
Bartered its powdery cap;
And the colors of joy in the bird,
And the love in its carol heard,
Frog and lizard in holiday coats,
And turtle brave in his golden spots;
While cheerful cries of crag and plain
Reply to the thunder of river and main.
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882 from Through the Year with the Poets: May
Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose. Hail bounteous May that dost inspire Mirth and youth, and warm desire, Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing, Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song, And welcom thee, and wish thee long.
~~
John Milton (1608-1674)
from Poetical Works, 1900
Ah! my heart is weary waiting, Waiting for the May –
Waiting for the pleasant rambles,
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles, With the woodbine alternating, Scent the dewy way. Ah! my heart is weary waiting, Waiting for the May.
Ah! my heart is sick with longing, Longing for the May –
Longing to escape from study,
To the young face fair and ruddy, And the thousand charms belonging To the summer's day. Ah! my heart is sick with longing, Longing for the May.
Ah! my heart is sore with sighing, Sighing for the May –
Sighing for their sure returning,
When the summer beams are burning, Hopes and flowers that, dead or dying, All the winter lay. Ah! my heart is sore with sighing, Sighing for the May.
Ah! my heart is pained and throbbing, Throbbing for the May –
Throbbing for the sea-side billows,
Or the water-wooing willows, Where in laughing and in sobbing Glide the streams away. Ah! my heart is pained and throbbing, Throbbing for the May.
Waiting sad, dejected, weary, Waiting for the May.
Spring goes by with wasted warnings,
Moon-lit evenings, sun-bright mornings; Summer comes, yet dark and dreary Life still ebbs away: Man is ever weary, weary, Waiting for the May!
I give you meadow-lands in April, fair With over-growth of beautiful green grass; There among fountains the glad hours shall pass,
And pleasant ladies bring you solace there.
With steeds of Spain and ambling palfreys rare; Provencal songs and dances that surpass; And quaint French mummings; and through hollow brass
A sound of German music on the air.
And gardens ye shall have, that every one May lie at ease about the fragrant place; And each with fitting reverence shall bow down Unto that youth to whom I gave a crown Of precious jewels like to those that grace
The Babylonian Kaiser, Prestcr John.
~~ Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?) translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) from The Early Italian Poets, 1861
April now walks the fields again,
Trailing her leaves
And holding all her buds against her heart:
Wrapt in her clouds and mists
She walks,
Groping her way among the graves of men.
The green of earth is differently green,
A dreadful knowledge trembles in the grass
And little wide-eyed flowers die too soon:
There is a stillness here —
After a terror of all raving sound —
And birds sit close for comfort
On broken boughs.
April, thy grief!
What of thy sun and glad, high wind,
Thy lifting hills and woods and eager brooks,
Thy thousand-petaled hopes?
The sky forbids thee sorrow, April!
And yet,
I see thee walking listlessly,
Across those scars that once were pregnant sod,
Those graves,
Those stepping-stones from life to life.
Death is an interruption between two heart-beats,
That I know
Yet know not how I know —
But April mourns,
Trailing her leaves,
The passion of her leaves,
Across the passion of those fearful fields.
Yes, all the fields!
No barrier here,
No challenge in the night,
No stranger-land,
No foe!
She passes with her perfect countersign,
Her green,
She wanders in her garden,
Dropping her buds like tears,
Spreading her lovely grief upon the graves of men.
~~
Leonora Speyer (1872-1956)
from A Canopic Jar, 1921
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla
pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat
illa: άποθανεîν θέλω.’
For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro.
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!— mon semblable,— mon frère!’
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