Easter / John Freeman

Easter

With Earth's arising riseth He from death,
        To all His faithful saith
                With urgent breath:

"Wake ye, out of your Winter-weary sleep!"
        And the slow pulses leap.
                No more then creep

The heavy days to night, and nights to day.
        The cloud-pack hastens away
                If He but say

Far off and faint and tremulous, "Awake!"
        How the heart's enemies quake
                When His steps shake

 
The silence they have woven as a shroud
        Upon it! Great and proud
                Alike they are bowed.

And as when lovely, radiant queenlike Spring
        Queenlike with her doth bring
                Every dear thing

Earth faints for; and the woods and gleaming meads
        Fulfilled are of their needs;
                And the lost seeds

Are found in keen green blades, and song again
        In birds, and the sweet rain
                Doth teach the plain

That gladness of the heaven-neighbouring hills;
        And the whole amazed Earth thrills
                With bliss that fills

Every hid channel and cell: — So when He rises
        In thousand sweet disguises,
                What swift surprises,

Heats, pregnant showers, flowers and rich airs He gives,
        Till the soul truly lives;
                And the fugitives —

Fear, Hate, Despair — ev'n as they fly are slain!
        O, precious ev'n the pain
                When in each vein

The leaping blood doth the old languors quicken;
        Precious, for hopes that sicken,
                To feel joys thicken

Like sudden leaves wherethrough the cool winds stir;
        Precious past gold and myrrh
                To feel Him near.

But as to some east hillside's dewless breast,
        Naked of leaf and nest,
                Spring, the loved guest,

Comes not, though all the woods her blisses cover.
        And larks but yonder hover
                The soft turf over;

Barren of Thy spring, Lord, unvisited
        Of any rains; but dead,
                Unmemoried,

My heart lies; yea, Thy spring neglects it yet.
        O, canst Thou still forget,
                My need forget?

~~
John Freeman (1880-1929)
from Fifty Poems, 1911

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

John Freeman biography

Jusben, Spring morning, 2011. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

April's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for April 2026:

Two Tramps in Mud Time, by Robert Frost

[...]

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You’re one month on in the middle of May.

[...]

(read by Robert Frost)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2015/04/two-tramps-in-mud-time.html

Penny's Top 30 / March 2026

Penny's Top 30

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in March 2026:

  1.  March, Hart Crane

  2.  Poem for Kathy, Will Dockery

  3.  A March Day in London, Amy Levy

  4.  First of March, Frederick Tennyson

  5.  A Song to Mithras, Rudyard Kipling

  6.  A March Night, Ethelwyn Wetherald

  7.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  8.  First Day of Spring, F.W. Harvey

  9.  A Thought for March 1860, Charles Tennyson Turner

10.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

11.  Saint Patrick, Edwin Markham

12.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

13.  A Morning Song (for the First Day of Spring), Eleanor Farjeon

14.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

15.  Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

16.  March, Jane G. Austin

17.  Afterglow, George J. Dance

18.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

19.  Winterworld Descending, Will Dockery

20. Spring, Richard Chenevix Trench

21. March, Annette Wynne

22. Winter's Muse Calling, JD Shirk

23. Mars & Avril, George J. Dance

24. A Meadow in Spring, Tom Bishop

25. March, George J. Dance

26. The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff

27. Song, Trumbull Stickney

28. March is the Month of Expectation, Emily Dickinson

29. United Dames of America, Wallace Stevens

30. Dear March - Come in -, Emily Dickinson

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

March / Annette Wynne

March

March is windy, March is wild,
Hurries like an eager child;
Puffing mouth and ruddy face,
Rushing in a windy race;
A breath or two he stops, and then
He's puffing madly off again.

March is windy, March is wild,
A rushing, blowing, puffing child.
And why does March go rushing so?
He's trying to catch spring, you know.

~~
Annette Wynne (1889-1952)

from For Days and Days: A year-round treasury of child verse, 1919

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

Annette Wynne biography

A.M. Mailick (1869-1946), Children running, ca. 1908 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

Spring / Richard Chenevix Trench

from The Seasons

Spring

Who was it that so lately said,
All pulses in thine heart were dead,

Old Earth, that now in festal robes
Appearest, as a bride new wed?

O wrapt so late in winding-sheet,
Thy winding-sheet, oh! where is fled?

Lo! 'tis an emerald carpet now,
Where the young monarch, Spring, may tread.

Dwight Wiliam Tryon (1849-1925),
Early Spring in New England, 1895.
Wikimedia Commons.

He comes, — and, a defeated king,
Old Winter, to the hills is fled.

The warm wind broke his frosty spear,
And loosed the helmet from his head;

And he weak showers of arrowy sleet
From his strongholds has vainly sped.

All that was sleeping is awake,
And all is living that was dead.

Who listens now, can hear the streams
Leap tinkling down their pebbly bed;

Or see them, from their fetters free,
Like silver snakes the meadows thread.

The joy, the life, the hope of earth,
They slept awhile, they were not dead:

Oh thou who say'st thy sere heart ne'er
With verdure can again be spread;

Oh thou who mournest them that sleep,
Low lying in an earthy bed;

Look out on this reviving world,
And be new hopes within thee bred.

~~

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1866)
from Poems, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Richard Chenevix Trench biography

"The Seasons" by Trench, read by Sonia for LibriVox. Courtesy Rhodoclassics.

("Spring" begins at 1:27.)

March / Jane G. Austin

March

There is no month so fair a type of life
In its first conscious strength and joy of strife
        As thou, wild moon of March!
Thou with they hurtling storms and soft blue sky
Within whose depths the great white cumuli
        Sleep under heaven's arch.

Thou with thy swift chill winds that snatch the breath
From pouting lips and swoop to grewsome death
        The sailor and his ship,
And then in sudden sunburst triumphing
Make rainbows in the shining drops that cling
        Upon his frozen lip.

I love thee well, nay, but I love thee not,
How can I tell if I do love or not,
        Unstable and untrue!
The raging lion now, and now the lamb,
The winter's blast, laden with springtide balm,
        O wild March, which is you?

A type of life, yea, of thy life, O friend!
And yet I know not thy life to the end:
        Thy life holds better things.
And March holds May, and May sweet summertime,
And summer dies and in its death sublime
        The grain of autumn brings.

~~
Jane G. Austin (1831-1894)
from Through the Year with the Poets: March, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Jane G. Austin biography

    Henri Camus, Storm at Pors-Loubous, France, March 2007. CC BY 1.0, Wikimedia Commons.

First Day of Spring / F.W. Harvey

First Day of Spring

{To A.E.S.)

We laid you fast in frozen clay
When Winter had enchained the land.
(Lad, was it but three weeks to-day?)
And now comes Springtime's messenger with golden tidings in his hand.

A mist blows off the thawing earth,
And drips from every budding tree.
The springs are loosed, and mad with mirth
Run lisping in the fallen leaves, or laughing in the sunlight free.

Oh you who loved the song so well,
Do you not hear the throstle's note?
Nor heed the lovesome light that fell
As warm five thousand years ago, when Solomon, the wise king, wrote?

"Sweet," wrote he. Yes, the light is sweet!
And maddening sweet to walk in Spring:
Yet is the pleasure incomplete
— How should the living understand the melodies that dead throats sing?

Thinker and poet clutch in vain
The secret of a laughing rill,
And Shakespeare's self could never gain
The message blown so mockingly by trumpet of a daffodil.

Dear lad, for you I will not call,
Nor let a foolish dread be born.
A thousand years is still too small
To learn the secrets you must learn, ere you arise on Doomsday morn.

For you have set your ear to earth
To list the growing of the flowers:
And catch the strains of Death and Birth:
And take the honey that is stored by all the flitting bee-like hours.

And you must put to memory
The silver music of the stars
That raineth down so silently,
And all the mighty harmony scrolled on the sky in ghttering bars.

The music that no man can make,
The colours that he cannot see,
These out of darkness you shall take
And nourish up your growing soul with manna of their mystery.

And then when you awake again
(And I have slept a little too),
How we shall rise to pace anew
An earth — where every dream is true, and nothing is unknown but pain.

~~
F.W. Harvey (1888-1957)
from A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad, 1918

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

F.W. Harvey biography

Wolfmann, Skjee Kirke, Sandefjord, Norway, 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Saint Patrick / Edwin Markham

St. Brendan's Cathedral, Galway.

CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Saint Patrick

    I

Wandered from the Antrim hills,
Wandered from Killala's rills,
Patrick heard upon the breeze
Voices from the Irish seas.
Folk of Fochlad called to him
From their forest deep and dim;
And in vision little hands
Beckoned from the Irish lands.
Where the western billows spoke
With the Druid groves of oak.
Evermore their cry did seem
Calling, calling, through his dream:
"Hasten with the flower of truth.
Walk among us, holy youth!"

Mary Immaculate of Lourdes

 Churc, Newton, MA 

CC BY-SA 4,0, Wikimedia Commons

    II

When he spread his dauntless sail
To the gladness of the gale,
Glowering demons, mile on mile,
Stood in league around the Isle,
Laughing out their crackling rage,
At the young, unfearing sage.
There with lifted cross he came,
Breathing low the Sacred Name,
And the demons, form by form,
Fled in fury down the storm.
Over the Isle his spirit went
Like fire across the firmament.
Kings at Tara caught the word. 

Churl and kern and chieftain heard.
Lo, the Druid's mystic rod
Fell down withered before God!

With the frost he kindled fire;
Drove the snakes from brake and briar,
Hurling out the writhing brood
With the lightning of his rood.
Once he stooped, and with his hand
Traced a cross upon the sand;
Then a wonder — from the ground
Sprang a stream with silver sound;
And a blind man kneeling there
Laved his eyelids, whispering prayer.
Then on his relighted eyes
Rushed the splendor of the skies —
Flashed the water's glancing bubble —
Gleamed the gold across the stubble —
Shined the roads that have no ends —
Smiled the faces of old friends.


    Ill

Holy Cross Chapel, Salt Lake City.

CC By-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

And when Patrick fell on sleep,
Twelve the days were, still and deep —
Twelve the days, with never a night,
Never a cloud across the light.
Angels chanted out the hours
Leaning from their sky-hung towers;
Like a garden blown to bloom
Was the sweetness round his tomb. . . .

Fable, legend, all are true:
More than these did Patrick do!
For he cleared the serpent den,
Hiding in the hearts of men;
Letting Love's bright fountain spring
Into sweetest murmuring.
Yes, the wise, heroic breed
Bring us miracle indeed.
On the dark he left God's smile,
Lighting up Ierne's Isle;
And forever lives his name
As the rose upon her fame.

~~

Edwin Markham (1852-1940)
from The Shoes of Happiness, and other poems, 1915

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

Edwin Markham biography

March / Hart Crane

March

Hart Crane. The Great Whatsit.

Awake to the cold light
of wet wind running
twigs in tremors. Walls
are naked. Twilights raw —
and when the sun taps steeples
their glistenings dwindle
upward . . .

                    March
slips along the ground
like a mouse under pussy
willows, a little hungry.

The vagrant ghost of winter,
is it this that keeps the chimney
busy still? For something
still nudges shingles and windows:

but waveringly,— this ghost,
this slate-eyed saintly wraith
of winter wanes
and knows its waning.

~~ 

Hart Crane (1899-1932) 

from Collected Poems, 1933

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

Hart Crane biography

"March" read by Thomas D.

A March Night / Ethelwyn Wetherald

A March Night

A wild wind and a flying moon,
        And drifts that shrink and cower;
A heart that leaps at the thought, How soon
        The earth will be in flower!

Behind the gust and the ragged cloud
        And the sound of loosening floods,
I see young May with her fair head bowed,
        Walking in a world of buds.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from Lyrics and Sonnets, 1931

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

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography

     Ross, Full moon rising over snowfields. March 2006. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

A Thought for March 1860 /Charles Tennyson Turner

A Thought for March 1860

Yon happy blackbird's note the rushing wind
Quells not, nor disconcerts his golden tongue,
That breaks my morning dream with well-known song;
How many a roaring March I've left behind,
Whose blasts, all-spirited with notes and trills,
Blew over peaceful England! and, ere long,
Another March will come these hills among,
To clash the lattices and whirl the mills:
But what shall be ere then? Ambition's lust
Is broad awake, and gazing from a throne
But newly set, counts half the world his own;
All ancient covenants aside are thrust,
Old landmarks are like scratches in the dust,
His eagles wave their wings, and they are gone.

~~
Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-1879) 
from Sonnets, 1864 

 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Charles Tennyson Turner biography

Sara Lindgren von Bothmer, Blackbird singing for spring, 2019.

CC BY SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

First of March / Frederick Tennyson

First of March

    I.

Thro' the gaunt woods the winds are shrilling cold,
    Down from the rifted rack the sunbeam pours
    Over the cold gray slopes, and stony moors;
The glimmering watercourse, the eastern wold,
And over it the whirling sail o' the mill,
    The lonely hamlet with its mossy spire,
    The piled city smoking like a pyre,
Fetch'd out of shadow gleam with light as chill.


    II.

The young leaves pine, their early promise stay'd;
    The Hope-deluded sorrow at the sight
    Of the sweet blossoms by the treacherous light
Flatter'd to death, like tender love betray'd;
And stepdames frown, and aged virgins chide;
    Relentless hearts put on their iron mood;
    The hunter's dog lies dreaming of the wood,
And dozes barking by the ingle-side.


    III.

Larks twitter, martens glance, and curs from far
    Rage down the wind, and straight are heard no more;
    Old wives peep ont, and scold, and bang the door;
And clanging clocks grow angry in the air;
Sorrow and care, perplexity and pain
    Frown darker shadows on the homeless one,
    And the gray beggar buffeting alone
Pleads in the howling storm, and pleads in vain.


    IV.

The field-fires smoke along the champaign drear,
    And drive before the north wind streaming down
    Bleak hill, and furrow dark, and fallow brown;
Few living things along the land appear;
The weary horse looks out, his mane astray,
    With anxious fetlock, and uneasy eye,
    And sees the market-carts go madly by
With sidelong drivers reckless of the way.


    V.

The sere beech-leaves, that trembled dry and red
    All the long Winter on the frosty bough,
    Or slept in quiet underneath the snow,
Fly off, like resurrections of the dead;
The homy ploughman, and his yoked ox,
    Wink at the icy blasts; and beldames bold,
    Stout, and red-hooded, flee before the cold;
And children's eyes are blinded by the shocks.


    VI.

You cannot hear the waters for the wind;
    The brook that foams, and falls, and bubbles by,
    Hath lost its voice — but ancient steeples sigh,
And belfries moan — and crazy ghosts, confined
In dark courts, weep, and shake the shuddering gates,
    And cry from points of windy pinnacles,
    Howl thro' the bars, and 'plain among the bells,
And shriek, and wail like voices of the Fates!


    VII.

And who is He, that down the mountain-side,
    Swift as a shadow flying from the sun,
    Between the wings of stormy Winds doth run,
With fierce blue eyes, and eyebrows knit with pride;
Though now and then I see sweet laughters play
    Upon his lips, like moments of bright heaven
    Thrown 'twixt the cruel blasts of morn and even,
And golden locks beneath his hood of gray?


    VIII.

Sometimes he turns him back to wave farewell
    To his pale Sire with icy beard and hair;
    Sometimes he sends before him thro' the air
A cry of welcome down a sunny dell;
And while the echoes are around him ringing,
    Sudden the angry wind breathes low and sweet,
    Young violets show their blue eyes at his feet,
And the wild lark is heard above him singing!

~~
Frederick Tennyson (1807-1898)
from Days and Hours, 1854

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Frederick Tennyson biography

Glyn Baker, Early Spring in Crowsheath Wood, March 2015.

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

March's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for March 2026:

A March Day in London, by Amy Levy

[...]

I would give anything to stay

The little wheel that turns in my brain;

The little wheel that turns all day,

That turns all night with might and main.

[...]

(read by Rhonda Fetterman for LibriVox.org)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2013/03/march-day-in-london.html

Penny's Top 30 / February 2026

In February, for the first time ever, Penny had 20 poems receive more than 100 page views in a month. While welcome, that crowded out most of the month's new poetry. Rather than have the latter fail to chart, Penny is provisionally expanding the monthly chart to a Top 30. 

Penny's Top 30

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in February 2026:

  1.  Poem for Kathy, Will Dockery

  2.  Afterglow, George J. Dance

  3.  February, Ina Coolbrith

  4.  United Dames of America, Wallace Stevens

  5.  The Great Willows, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

  6.  Cherry-Ripe, Robert Herrick

  7.  The Blue Heron, Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  8.  To the Sea Angel, Will Dockery

  9.  Drifting Away: A Fragment, Charles Kingsley

10.  Winter Nightfall, Robert Bridges

11.  Before I sleep, some dreams draw nigh, George McDonald

12.  A Dirge for Summer, Sebastian Evans 

13.  A Rhyme of Summer, James Berry Bensel

14.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance

15.  "Whan That Aprille . . .", John Dos Passos

16.  The Man with the Blue Guitar, Wallace Stevens

17.  A May Morning, John Davidson

18.  January 1939, Dylan Thomas

19.  Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas

20. Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

21.  I'm Not Just February, Annette Wynne

22. Winter's Muse Calling, JD Shirk

23. Haiku and Triolet, R.S. Mallari

24. The Holly and the Ivy

25. Skating, William Wordsworth

26. Winterworld Descending, Will Dockery

27. Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

28. Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

29. February, Sophie Jewett

30. A Valentine, Lewis Carroll

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

February / Sophie Jewett

February

Last night I heard a robin sing;
And though I walked where woods were bare,
And winds were cold, life quivered there,
As if in sleep the heart of spring
Were moved to dim remembering.
To-day no promise haunts the air;
I find but snow and silence where
Last night I heard a robin sing.

~~
Sophie Jewett (1861-1909), 1893
from The Pilgrim, and other poems, 1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Sophie Jewett biography

Kenneth Allen, Winter Robin, Mullaghmore, 2013. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Winter's Muse Calling / JD Shirk

Winter's Muse Calling

Soodiasadi, Winter hiking

 in Switzerland, 2020 (detail).

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

I will not venture far outside today
Where things are frozen solid anyway
There wind is howling through the naked trees
I doubt there's really all that much to see

There's ice I'm sure that's covering the lake
Bare rocks and such whatever trail I take
All birds and creatures of the wooded park
Are hibernating somewhere safe and dark

Still, looking out my window I can muse
If winter could by chance be holding clues
To secrets known to those who cannot stay
Indoors on even coldest winter days

Of course you know I say all this the while
I'm buckling boots and going for a mile

~~
JD Shirk, 2022

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

JD Shirk biography

I'm Not Just February / Annette Wynne

I'm Not Just February

Frances Tipton Hunter (1896-1957),

Our Valentine Party, from The Children's 

Party Book, 1923. Wikimedia Commons.

I'm not just February
With winds that blow
All day, and piled-up snow;
I'm Washington and Lincoln, too,
Who kept our country's flag for you!
I'm Valentine of airy grace —
With golden hearts and hearts of lace
And pretty cards that people send,
Quite as a secret, to a friend.
Though I am short of days and small,
I'm quite a big month, after all!

~~
Annette Wynne (1889-1952)

from For Days and Days: A year-round treasury of child verse, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in

Canada, the United States, and  

the European Union]

Annette Wynne biography

February / Ina Coolbrith

February

Newly wedded, and happy quite,
    Careless alike of wind and weather,
Two wee birds, from a merry flight,
    Swing in the tree-top, sing together:
Love to them, in the wintry hour,
Summer and sunshine, bud and flower!

So, belovéd, when skies are sad,
    Love can render their sombre golden;
A thought of thee, and the day is glad
    As a rose in the dewy dawn unfolden;
And away, away, on passionate wings,
My heart like a bird at thy window sings!

~~

Ina Coolbrith (1841-1928)
from The Golden Gate, and other poems, 1895

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

Ina Coolbrith biography

Valentine's Day on The Penny Blog

Tatiana Gerus, Russian blue tit and great tit, 2011. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Poem for Kathy / Will Dockery

Poem for Kathy

Kathy and Will, February 11, 1978.

Who is wonderful to me
who's a true love –
Princess of the Night
Demonstar Sorceress,
lots of love to you –
you're great.

I can't think of
anything else I should write.
If I try
my emotions explode.

~~
Will Dockery, 1977
from Selected Poems, 1976-2019, 2019 

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

Will Dockery biography

Valentine's Day on The Penny Blog

A Valentine / Lewis Carroll

A Valentine

    [Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see
    him when he came, but didn’t seem to miss him if he stayed away.]

And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
        With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
        And yet bear parting?

And must I then, at Friendship’s call,
Calmly resign the little all
(Trifling, I grant, it is and small)
        I have of gladness,
And lend my being to the thrall
        Of gloom and sadness?

And think you that I should be dumb,
And full dolorum omnium,
Excepting when you choose to come
        And share my dinner?
At other times be sour and glum
        And daily thinner?

Must he then only live to weep,
Who’d prove his friendship true and deep
By day a lonely shadow creep,
        At night-time languish,
Oft raising in his broken sleep
        The moan of anguish?

The lover, if for certain days
His fair one be denied his gaze,
Sinks not in grief and wild amaze,
        But, wiser wooer,
He spends the time in writing lays,
        And posts them to her.

And if the verse flow free and fast,
Till even the poet is aghast,
A touching Valentine at last
        The post shall carry,
When thirteen days are gone and past
        Of February.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,
In desert waste or crowded street,
Perhaps before this week shall fleet,
        Perhaps to-morrow,
I trust to find your heart the seat
        Of wasting sorrow.

~~
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), 1860
from Phantasmagoria, and other poems, 1869

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Lewis Carroll biography

"A Valentine" read for LibriVox.org. Courtesy Audiobooks Hub.

Winter / Richard Chenevix Trench

from The Seasons

Winter

White ermine now the mountains wear,
And shield with this their shoulders bare.

The dark pine wears the snow, as head
Of Ethiop doth white turban wear.

The floods are armed with silver shields,
Through which the Sun's sword cannot fare;

For he who once in mid heaven rode,
In golden arms, on golden chair,

Now through small corner of the sky
Creeps low, nor warms the foggy air.

To mutter 'twixt their teeth the streams,
In icy fetters, scarcely dare.

Hushed is the busy hum of life;
'Tis silence in the earth and air.

From mountains issues the gaunt wolf,
And from its forest depths the bear.

Where is the garden's beauty now?
The thorn is here; the rose, oh where?

The trees, like giant skeletons,
Wave high their fleshless arms and bare;

Or stand like wrestlers stripped and bold,
And strongest winds to battle dare.

It seems a thing impossible
That earth its glories should repair;

That ever this bleak world again
Should bright and beauteous mantle wear,

Or sounds of life again be heard
In this dull earth and vacant air.

~~

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1866)
from Poems, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[Spring]

Richard Chenevix Trench biography

"The Seasons" by Trench, read by Sonia for LibriVox. Courtesy Rhodoclassics.

February's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for February 2026:

Afterglow, by George J. Dance

My darling, on this night of Valentine's, 

Excuse me while I find a way to say 

I love you, knowing I could never pay 

For thirty years with only fourteen lines

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2012/02/afterglow-george-dance.html

Penny's Top 20 / January 2026

   

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in January 2026:

  1.  The Winter Lakes, William Wilfred Campbell

  2.  Snow, Snow, George J. Dance

  3.  A Song for the New Year, Barry Cornwall

  4.  The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

  5.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  6.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  7.  Winter, Bernard Barton

  8.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  9.  A January Night, Thomas Hardy

10.  Mild is the Parting Year, Walter Savage Landor

11.  January, John Clare

12.  The Year Has Changed Its Name, William Morris

13.  January, Ellwood Roberts

14.  Winterworld Descending, Will Dockery

15.  January, Jane G. Austin

16.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

17.  Prey, George J. Dance

18.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

19.  I'm January, Annette Wynne

20. January, George J. Dance

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

I'm January / Annette Wynne

I'm January

I'm January bringing you
A year of days — all brand, brand new;
I step upon the frosty ground
When chimes and sleighbells ring around;
You welcome me and children sing,
And joy comes into everything.
I bring you love and lots of cheer,
And work and friends for all the year.

~~
Annette Wynne (1889-1952)

from For Days and Days: A year-round treasury of child verse, 1919

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

[February]

Annette Wynne biography

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Girl in Snow with Dog, 1916 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

January / Jane G. Austin

January

O dark and cold! O dead and drear!
    O bitter end of weary strife!
Art thou indeed the glad New Year,
    Thou stillborn mockery of life?

And art thou then the final fate,
    The end for which our years were born,
So white, so still, so desolate,
    A night that never leads to morn?

It is not peace, this frozen calm,
    And yet it is surcease of pain,
Nepenthe is the surest balm,
    For wounds so healed, bleed not again.

Yes, we will love thee, month of death,
    Yes, we will call thee glad New Year,
Freeze with thy kiss my weary breath,
    See, I am thine, I know no fear.

~~
Jane G. Austin (1831-1894)
from Through the Year with the Poets: January, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[February]

Jane G. Austin biography

    Lori Iverson, National Elk Refuge, Wyoming, January 2012. CC BY 2.0 Wikimedia Commons.

January / Ellwood Roberts

January

The short midwinter days are here,
The nights are frosty now and chill —
The solemn midnight of the year —
The snow lies deep on vale and hill.
No longer runs the streamlet nigh,
The ice has bound its waters fast;
An Arctic wind is sweeping by,
The bare trees shiver in the blast.

How changed the Schuylkill's tide! no more
It sparkles in the noonday light;
The ice extends from shore to shore,
Its strength increasing, day and night.
The skaters o'er its surface fly,
In rhythmic motion, all the day,
While dark clouds sweep across the sky,
Foreboding tempests on the way.

And soon we see the storm begin,
All day the snowflakes scurry past,
All night we hear the tempest's din,
The forests bend beneath the blast.
In whirling clouds the snow is hurled,
Along the hillside, down the glen;
Another day the whole bright world
Is shut by drifts beyond our ken.

But soon the sun resumes his sway,
His noontide beams are warm and bright;
The stubborn ice-bridge yields by day,
Though drear and sombre falls the night.
Alternate thaw and storm and cold,
With snowdrifts deep and changeful sky,
The earth in chill embrace enfold —
And so the month goes slowly by.

Midwinter days and nights so drear,
With storm-clouds sweeping o'er the sky—
The solemn midnight of the year
Soon pass and leave no token nigh.
Bare trees that quake beneath the blast,
Will yet be clothed in leafage bright,
And days so chill — the Winter past —
Be bathed in floods of Spring-time light.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ellwood Roberts biography

Logopop, Moonlight in the middle of nowhere 4, 2011. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

A January Night / Thomas Hardy

A January Night
         (1879)

The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
        The water wheezes.

The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour's face;
There is some hid dread afoot
        That we cannot trace.

Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in to-day?
        We do not know.

~~
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
from Moments of Vision, 1917

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

Thomas Hardy biography

"A January Night" read by Jean Aked. Courtesy jeanakedpoetry.