Even in the bluest noonday of July / Robert Louis Stevenson

To Mrs. Will. H. Low

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

[Poem is in the public domain]

Robert Louis Stevenson biography

July's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured poem for July 2025:

Summer 1969, by Michael G. Munoz

The first turn of July heat

And I was growing fast

Leaning into the sun

Like the nascent fan palms sprouting up

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2012/07/summer-1969.html

I Am a Canadian / John Diefenbaker

I Am a Canadian

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)

(courtesy Flickr.com)

Penny's Top 20 / June 2025

   

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in June 2025:

  1.  Mind on a Wander, JD Shirk

  2.  Wander-Thirst, Gerald Gould

  3.  Metric Figure, William Carlos Williams

  4.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  5.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  6.  Daddy, Sylvia Plath

  7.  My Father, Ann Taylor

  8.  June Rain, Richard Aldington

  9.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

10.  June, Folgore de San Geminiano

11.   Spring Again, George J. Dance

12.  A Summer Invocation, Walt Whitman

13.  Laurentian Lure, Arthur S. Bourinot

14.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

15.  June Days, Charles Lotin Hildreth

16.  A June Day, John Todhunter

17.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens

18.  In the Fields, Charlotte Mew

19.  May, Folgore de San Geminiano

20. Ballad of the Goodly Fere, Ezra Pound

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

June / Folgore de San Geminiano

from Of the Months

June

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Peasants picking fruit, from Une Compilation d’œuvres d’Art Médiévales Liées: 

Aux Pommes et aux Vergers, 19th century. Courtesy Orchard Notes.

A June Day / John Todhunter

A June Day

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Todhunter biography

DrStew82, View from the summit of Bald Mountain, Maine, June 2017.

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

A Summer Invocation / Walt Whitman

A Summer Invocation

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]

Walt Whitman biography

Guilhem Vellut, Sun & Blue Sky, 2021. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

June Days / Charles Lotin Hildreth

June Days

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Daddy / Sylvia Plath

Daddy

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]

Sylvia Plath biography

"Daddy" read by Sylvia Plath. Courtesy mishima 1970.

Laurentian Lure / Arthur S. Bourinot

Laurentian Lure

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]

Arthur S. Bourinot biography

Andrew Wilkie Kilgour (1868-1930), The Spring Thaw, Laurentians. Wikimedia Commons.

Wander-Thirst / Gerald Gould

Wander-Thirst

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]

Gerald Gould biography

"The Wander Thist" performed by The Hall Brothers, 2002. Courtesy Maori Music Publishing.

Mind on a Wander / JD Shirk

Mind on a Wander

I

I go for walks before daylight
Over mountains
Through the valleys
To watch the dawn fade out of night

Through the great uncharted nowhere
To find a place
Of quiet peace
Where morning mist, floats cool in air

Where trees stir whispers in their leaves
The secret words
Of ancient times
Spoke only to those who believe

Tom Thomson (1877-1917), The Jack Pine,

1916 (detail), Wikimedia Commons.

II

Deep in solitude, unbroken
In one endless
Moment passing
I would pray with words unspoken

For those who sleep forgotten dreams
Who mourn the loss
Of what they held
Who live where desperation screams

For ones who live for endless war
Who sign with blood
Of younger ones
Their creed of death and greed for more


III

Is there a place deep in your soul
Where dreams are kept
Safe out of sight?
While you play in another's role

Is there a candle light of hope
You keep in sight
Inside the dark?
Where is the strength you find to cope?

Do you have moments when you see
Beyond the wall
You built around
To where the dreams, you dream are free?


IV

But I would lead these thoughts away
To listen to
The silence speak
To watch the trees begin to sway

To stand alone in morning's light
Between the trees
Beside the lake
To wonder if somehow I might

Bring back a measure of this place
To share with ones
Who might feel lost
Who need to know the mist's embrace

~~
JD Shirk, 2023

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

June's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured poem for June 2025:

Metric Figure, by William Carlos Williams

There is a bird in the poplars! –

It is the sun!

The leaves are little yellow fish

Swimming in the river

[...]

(read for Reader's Utopia)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2012/06/metric-figure.html

Penny's Top 20 / May 2025

  

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in May 2025:

  1.  On Mulberry Drive, Will Dockery

  2.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  3.  Spring Again, George J. Dance

  4.  May Wind, Sara Teasdale

  5.  The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 

  6.  An April Shower, George J. Dance

  7.  April on the Battlefields, Leonora Speyer

  8.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  9.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

10.  Youth and Nature, Philip Bourke Marston

11.  The Courage That My Mother Had, Edna St. Vincent Millay

12.  Song on May Morning, John Milton

13.  Philomel, Richard Barnfield

14.  Skating, William Wordsworth

15.  Waiting for the May, Denis McCarthy

16.  The Entering May, Ralph Waldo Emerson

17.  The Town Rabbit in the Country, Camilla Doyle

18.  Winter Ghost (Taking a Time Out), Will Dockery

19.  May Day, Sara Teasdale

20. North Wind in October, Robert Bridges

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

May / Folgore de San Geminiano

from Of the Months

May

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[June]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Medieval jousting tournament. Unknown ms., 17th century. Wikimedia Commons.

The Town Rabbit in the Country / Camilla Doyle

The Town Rabbit in the Country

Rabbit on Lawn, Enoch Leung, 2019. 

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

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]

Camilla Doyle biography

Philomel / Richard Barnfield

Philomel

Rufous (common) Nightingale, 

photo by Carlos Delgado, 2015. 

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

As it fell upon a day 

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[See also: "Philomela" by Philip Sidney]

Richard Barnfield biography

Youth and Nature / Philip Bourke Marston

Youth and Nature

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]

Philip Bourke Marston biography

Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887). Courtesy Musikinesis.

On Mulberry Drive / Will Dockery

On Mulberry Drive 

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.

~~
Will Dockery, 2023
from Shadowville Mythos, March 2023

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

Will Dockery biography

"On Mulberry Drive" performed by Will Dockery & Brian Mallard, 2025.

The Courage That My Mother Had / Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Courage That My Mother Had

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

~~
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
from Mine the Harvest, 1949

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay biography 

 

"The courage that my mother had" read by Kathryn Sadjak  Courtesy Millay Society.

The Entering May / Ralph Waldo Emerson

from May-Day

The Entering May

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 

(edited by Oscar Fay Adams), 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ralph Waldo Emerson biography

"May-Day" from Ralph Waldo Emerson YouTube. (Selection runs 8.18 - 9.10).

Song on May Morning / John Milton

Song on May Morning

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Milton biography

"Song on May Morning" read by Tom Kinsella. Courtesy LITT at Stockton.

Waiting for the May / Denis MacCarthy

Waiting for the May (Summer Longings)

                Las mananas floridas de Abril y Mayo. – Calderon

    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!

~~

Denis Florence MacCarthy (1817-1882)

from Poems, 1882

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Denis MacCarthy biography

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

May's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for May 2025:

May Wind, by Sara Teasdale

 I said, "I have shut my heart

As one shuts an open door,

That Love may starve within

And trouble me no more."

[...]

(read by Aimee Reads Poetry)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-wind-teasdale.html

Penny's Top 20 / April 2025

 

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in April 2025:

  1.  The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot

  2.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  3.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  4.  An April Fool of Long Ago, Jean Blewett

  5.  An April Shower, George J. Dance

  6.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

  7.  April on the Battlefields, Leonora Speyer

  8.  Spring Again, George J. Dance
  9.  Skating, William Wordsworth

10.  April, Folgore de San Geminiano

11.  An Easter Carol, Christina Rossetti

12.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

13.  The Lonely Hunter, Fiona MacLeod

14.  To the Sea Angel, Will Dockery

15.  March, Folgore de San Geminiano

16.  The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams

17.  Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens

18.  Puella Parvula, Wallace Stevens

19.  Penny's Blog 2.0, George J. Dance

20. The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

April / Folgore de San Geminiano

from Of the Months

April

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[May]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Limbourg brothers, "April" from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 

ca. 1402-1416. Wikimedia Commons.

An April Shower / George J. Dance

James Ensor (1860-1949),

 Boulevard Van Iseghem in the Rain. 

Wikimedia Commons.

An April Shower

The rain has returned, the wonderful rain!

        Who cares if we're shut inside?
We'll sit at the glass and see our world
        Baptized and sanctified.

See how like magic overnight
        The frozen waste is gone,
How green light gleams from every tree,
        Green lace decks every lawn.

We'll watch the water of life pour down
        And later, after the rain
We'll see the rainbow and the sun
        And we'll go out again.

~~
George J. Dance, 2020

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography

An Easter Carol / Christina Rossetti

An Easter Carol

            Spring bursts to-day,
For Christ is risen and all the earth's at play.

            Flash forth, thou Sun,
The rain is over and gone, its work is done.

            Winter is past,
Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last.

            Bud, Fig and Vine,
Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.

            Break forth this morn
In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn.

            Uplift thy head,
O pure white Lily through the Winter dead.

            Beside your dams
Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.

            All Herds and Flocks
Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.

            Sing, Creatures, sing,
Angels and Men and Birds and everything.

            All notes of Doves
Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from A Pageant, and other poems, 1881

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Christina Rossetti biography

"An Easter Carol" read by Robin Shuckburgh. Courtesy The Cotswold Explorer.

April on the Battlefields / Leonora Speyer

April on the Battlefields

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]

Leonora Speyer biography

  DrStew82, Chickamauga battlefield, April 2019 (detail). CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Waste Land (I) / T.S. Eliot

THE WASTE LAND

      ‘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!’


[continued]

"The Waste Land - Part I - The Burial of the Dead" by T. S. Eliot 

(read by Tom O'Bedlam). Courtesy SpokenVerse. 

The Waste Land (II) / T.S. Eliot

            II.  A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid — troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
‘Jug Jug’ to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

‘My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.’

    I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

‘What is that noise?’
                                   The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
                                   Nothing again nothing.
                                                                       ‘Do
‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
‘Nothing?’

                    I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
                                                                                         But 

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag —
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’
‘I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
‘What shall we ever do?’
                                                The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

    When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said —
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot —
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. 

    Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.


[continued]

"The Waste Land - Part II - A Game of Chess" by T.S. Eliot 

(read by Tom O'Bedlam). Courtesy SpokenVerse.

The Waste Land (III) / T.S. Eliot

            III.  The Fire Sermon

    The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest —
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

                        The river sweats
                        Oil and tar
                        The barges drift
                        With the turning tide
                        Red sails
                        Wide
                        To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
                        The barges wash
                        Drifting logs
                        Down Greenwich reach
                        Past the Isle of Dogs.
                                    Weialala leia
                                    Wallala leialala

                        Elizabeth and Leicester
                        Beating oars
                        The stern was formed
                        A gilded shell
                        Red and gold
                        The brisk swell
                        Rippled both shores
                        Southwest wind
                        Carried down stream
                        The peal of bells
                        White towers
                                    Weialala leia
                                    Wallala leialala

‘Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’

‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’
I made no comment. What should I resent?’

‘On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
                            la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

[continued]

"The Waste Land Part III The Fire Sermon" by T.S. Eliot

(read by Tom O'Bedlam). Courtesy SpokenVerse.