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"