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 and the United States]

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

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

Poem for Kathy / Will Dockery

Poem for Kathy

Will and Kathy, 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

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]

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 and the United States]

[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.

Snow, Snow / George J. Dance

Snow, Snow

Snow, snow, get out of here;
Come again some other year.
I'd rather that the skies were clear.
Snow, snow, get out of here.

~~
George J. Dance, 2026

["Snow, Snow" by George J. Dance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Unported License.]

George J. Dance biography

Ser Armantio de Nicolao, Snowstorm aftermath in northern Virginia, 2009.

CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Winter / Bernard Barton

Winter

Thou hast thy beauties: sterner ones, I own,
    Than those of thy precursors; yet to thee
    Belong the charms of solemn majesty
And naked grandeur. Awful is the tone
Of thy tempestuous nights, when clouds are blown
    By hurrying winds across the troubled sky;
    Pensive, when softer breezes faintly sigh
Through leafless boughs, with ivy overgrown.
Thou hast thy decorations too, although
    Thou art austere: thy studded mantle, gay
With icy brilliants, which as proudly glow
    As erst Golconda's; and thy pure array
Of regal ermine, when the drifted snow
    Envelopes nature; till her features seem
    Like pale, but lovely ones, seen when we dream.

~~
Bernard Barton (1784-1849) 

from Poems, 1825

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Bernard Barton biography

WolfmanSF, Panoramic winter view of Crater Lake from Rim Village, 2012.

CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Year Has Changed Its Name / William Morris

The Year Has Changed Its Name

from The Earthly Paradise (1870)

The year has changed its name since that last tale;
Yet nought the prisoned spring doth that avail.
Deep buried under snow the country lies;
Made dim by whirling flakes the rook still flies
Southwest before the wind; noon is as still
As midnight on the southward-looking hill,
Whose slopes have heard so many words and loud
Since on the vine the woolly buds first showed.
The raven hanging o'er the farmstead gate,
While for another death his eye doth wait,
Hears but the muffled sound of crowded byre
And winds' moan round the wall. Up in the spire
The watcher set high o'er the half-hid town
Hearkens the sound of chiming bells fall down
Below him; and so dull and dead they seem
That he might well-nigh be amidst a dream
Wherein folk hear and hear not.

~~
William Morris (1834-1896)
from Through the Year with the Poets: January 

(edited by Oscar Fay Adams), 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Morris biography

Jacob Spinks, Rook, December 2013. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

A Song for the New Year / Barry Cornwall

A Song to the New Year

Hark!
The Old Year is gone!
And the young New Year is coming!
Through minutes, and days, and unknown skies,
My soul on her forward journey flies;
Over the regions of rain and snow;
And beyond where the wild March-trumpets blow:
And I see the meadows, all cowslip-strewn;
And I dream of the dove in the greenwood lone;
And the wild bee humming:—
And all because the New Year is coming!

The Winter is cold, the Winter is grey,
But he hath not a sound on his tongue to-day:
The son of the stormy Autumn, he
Totters about on a palsied knee,
With a frozen heart and a feeble head:
Let us pierce a barrel and drink him dead!
The fresh New Year is almost here;
Let us warm him with mistletoe boughs, my dear!
Let us welcome hither with songs and wine,
Who holdeth such joys in his arms divine!
What is the Past,— to you, or me,
But a thing that was, and was to be?
And now it is gone to a world unknown;
Its deeds are done; its flight is flown!

Hark to The Past! In a bitter tone,
It crieth, "The good Old Year is flown," —
The sire of a thousand thoughtful hours,
Of a thousand songs, of a thousand flowers!
Ah! why, thou ungrateful child of rhyme,
Rail'st thou at the deeds of our father Time?
Hath he not fed thee, day by day,
With fancies that soothe thy soul alway?
Hath he not 'wakened, with pleasant pain,
The Muse that slept in thy teeming brain?
Hath he not, — ah dost thou forget
All the amount of the mighty debt?

Hush, hush! The little I owe to Time
I'll pay him, some day, with a moody rhyme,
Full of phantasmas, dark and drear,
As the shadows thrown down by the old Old Year,
Dim as the echoes that lately fell
From the deep Night's funereal bell,
Sounding hollow o'er hill and vale,
Like the close of a mournful tale!
In the mean time,— speak, trump and drum!
The Year is gone! the Year is come!
The fresh New Year, the bright New Year,
That telleth of hope and joy, my dear!
Let us model our spirit to chance and change,
Let us lesson our spirit to hope, and range
Through pleasures to come,— through years unknown;
But never forget the time that's flown! 

~~
Barry Cornwall (1787-1874)
from English Songs, and other small poems, 1844

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Barry Cornwall biography

George Henry Broughton (1833-1905), Party for New Year's Day in New Amsterdam, 1870.

Public domain, Wikimedia Commons,

Mild is the Parting Year / Walter Savage Landor

Chris Downer, New Year's Eve stroll, 2005. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

from Ianthe

XXXI

Mild is the parting year, and sweet
    The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
    And balmless is its closing day.

I wait its close, I court its gloom,
    But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
    The tear that would have soothed it all.

~~
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
from Gebir, Count Julian, and other poems, 1831

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Walter Savage Landor biography

"Mild is the Parting Yerr" read for Audiobook Passion.

January's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for January 2026:

The Winter Lakes, by William Wilfred Campbell

[...]

Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the day;

Under the glimmer of stars and the purple of sunsets dying,

Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes away.

[...]

(read by Jolene Sentes)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/01/winter-lakes-william-wilfred-campbell.html

Penny's Top 20 / December 2025

  

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  December, John Clare

  2.  Christmas, W.H. Davies

  3.  Christmas at Sea, Robert Louis Stevenson

  4.  Winterworld Descending, Will Dockery

  5.  A Winter Elegy, Charles Lotin Hildreth

  6.  The Three Kings, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  7.  Reflections in Netley Abbey, Edward Hamley

  8.  Prey, George J. Dance

  9.  December Finds Himself Again a Child, Nicholas Gordon

10.  Across a Wall, JD Shirk

11.  Skating, William Wordsworth

12.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

13.  The Poor Boy's Christmas, Ellis Parker Butler

14.  December, Mary E. Blake

15.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

16.  The Rich Boy's Christmas, Ellis Parker Butler

17.  The Clock-Tower Bell, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

18.  Autumn, John Clare

19.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

20. December, Folgore da San Geminiano

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

Penny's Top 100 of 2025

  

Penny's Top 100

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

  1.  Penny's Blog, George J. Dance 

  2.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  3.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  4.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

  5.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens 

  6.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin 

  7.  Christmas Sonnet, E.A. Woodward 

  8.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  9.  December, John Clare 

10.  The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot

11.  The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams 

12.  Spring Longings, Francis W. Bourdillon

13.  Winterworld Descending, Will Dockery

14.  The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff

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

16.  News, AE Reiff

17.  Spring Again, George J. Dance

18.  Away, George J. Dance

19.  Angel Standing in the Sun, AE Reiff

20.  A Song to Mithras, Rudyard Kipling

21.  January, George J. Dance

22.  Ganesha Girl on Rankin, Will Dockery

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

24.  On Mulberry Drive, Will Dockery

25.  Once Like a Light, AE Reiff

26.  Prey, George J. Dance

27.  April on the Battlefields, Leonora Speyer

28.  Mind on a Wander, JD Shirk

29.  An April Shower, George J. Dance

30.  Wander-Thirst, Gerald Gould

31.  Winter Ghost (Taking a Time out), Will Dockery

32.  Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas

33.  Jonah, AE Reiff

34.  Tired of Waiting, Will Dockery

35.  Amarant, AE Reiff

36.  'Tis the World's Winter, Alfred Tennyson

37.  O Winter! Wilt thou never, never go?, David Gray

38.  Morning of My Life, Will Dockery

39.  Waiting for Winter, JD Shirk

40.  The Lodger, Francis Sherman

41.  The Branch, AE Reiff

42.  Summer 1969, Michael G. Munoz

43.  Song in March, William Gilmore Simms

44.  March, Folgore da San Geminiano

45.  June, Folgore da San Geminiano

46.  Song on May Morning, John Milton

47.  An Easter Carol, Christina Rossetti

48.  Daddy, Sylvia Plath

49.  Spring: An ode, Jane West

50.  The Plant, AE Reiff

51.  Christmas, W.H. Davies

52.  A Summer Invocation, Walt Whitman

53.  Heaven's Man, AE Reiff

54.  April, Folgore da San Geminiano

55.  March is the Month of Expectation, Emily Dickinson

56.  A Brief Winter Sunset, JD Shirk

57.  The Mounting Summer, Brilliant and Ominous, Delmore Schwartz

58.  A Disappointment, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

59.  Song: To Celia, Ben Jonson

60.  Song, Trumbull Stickney

61.  October, Elinor Wylie

62.  Sunlight, AE Reiff

63.  A June Day, John Todhunter

64.  The Lonely Hunter, Fiona MacLeod

65.  Mid-August, Duncan Campbell Scott

66.  Philomel, Richard Barnfield

67.  Barley Feed, AE Reiff

68.  Coats, JD Shirk

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

70.  The Town Rabbit in the Country, Camilla Doyle

71.  Autumn, John Clare

72.  Suspending Winter Willingly in Disbelief, Cathleen Harvea Guthrie

73.  Memory of My Father, Patrick Kavanagh

74.  The Landscape, William Shenstone

75.  September, Michael Field 

76.  Even in the bluest noonday of July, Robert Louis Stevenson

77.  For Once, Then, Something, Robert Frost

78.  Spring Sonnet, E.A. Woodward

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

80.  June Days, Charles Lotin Hildreth

81.  May, Folgore da San Geminiano

82.  How happy I was if I could forget, Emily Dickinson

83.  A November Grave, James B. Kenyon

84.  As August Comes, Clinton Scollard

85.  Youth and Nature, Philip Marston

86.  Before the Birth of Spring, Charles Leonard Moore

87.  Christmas at Sea, Robert Louis Stevenson

88.  From Piccadilly in August, John Freeman

89.  Midnight Cry, R.K. Singh

90.  Laurentian Lure, Arthur S. Bourinot

91.  The Entering May, Ralph Waldo Emerson

92.  Metric Figure, William Carlos Williams

93.  Waiting for the May, Denis MacCarthy

94.  Winter Sunset, William Carlos Williams

95.  All Day It Has Rained, Alun Lewis

96.  October, Folgore da San Geminiano

97.  A Winter Elegy, Charles Lotin Hildreth

98.  Morning in August, James Herbert Morse

99.  The Three Kings, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

100 Reflections in Netley Abbey, Edward Hamley

Source: Blogger, "Stats"