October / George Arnold

October

On hill and field October’s glories fade;
    O’er hill and field the blackbirds southward fly;
The brown leaves rustle down the forest glade,
Where naked branches make a fitful shade,
    And the last blooms of Autumn withered lie.

The berries on the hedgerow ripen well —
    Holly and cedar, burning-bush and brier;
The partridge drums in some half-hidden dell,
Where all the ground is gemmed with leaves that fell
    Last storm from the tall maple’s crown of fire.

The chirp of crickets and the hum of bees
    Come faintly up from marsh and meadow-land,
Where reeds and rushes whisper in the breeze,
And sunbeams slant between the moss-grown trees,
    Green on the grass and golden on the sand.

From many a tree whose tangled boughs are bare
    Lean the rich clusters of the clambering vine:
October’s mellow hazes dim the air
Along the uplands and the valley, where
    The distant steeples of the village shine.

Adown the brook the dead leaves whirling go;
    Above the brook the scarlet sumacs burn;
The lonely heron sounds his note of woe
In gloomy forest-swamps, where rankly grow
    The crimson cardinal and feathery fern.

Autumn is sad: a cold blue horizon
    Darkly encircles checkered fields and farms,
Where late the gold of ripening harvests shone;
But bearded grain and fragrant hay are gone,
    And Autumn mourns the loss of Summer’s charms.

Yet, though our Summers change and pass away —
    Though dies the beauty of the hill and plain —
Though warmth and color fade with every day —
Hope passes not, and something seems to say
    That all our hrightest joys shall come again.

And if the flowers we nurture with such care
    Must wither, though bedewed with many tears,
They shall arise in some diviner air,
To bloom again, more fragrant and more fair,
    And gladden us through all the coming years.

The sun sinks slowly toward the far-off west
    The breeze is freshening from the far-off shore:
So come, fair eve, and bring each weary breast
That sense of tranquil joy, of gentle rest,
    Felt in the happy Autumns gone before!

~~
George Arnold (1831-1865)
from Poems Grave and Gay, 1867

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Arnold biography

"October" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

An October Hush / Bliss Carman

An October Hush

The small red maple leaves, keen-scented, mute,
    Here fleck the stream, to grape-dark purple hushed:
More rich and lovelier than bloom or fruit
    Since honey-hearted snowy May-buds blushed.

Between the quick impulsive summer's heat
    And deep clear-eyed unhasting after-days,
Fall these few hours of warm ripe light, more sweet
    Than since those apple-pink new morns of May's.

~~
Bliss Carman (1861-1929), 1883
from Through the Year with the Poets, 1886

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

Bliss Carman biography

ForestWander Nature Photography, Fall Foliage Creek Leaves Stream, October 2009. 

CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

October / Madison Cawein

October

I oft have met her slowly wandering
    Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,
    As if on her the sumach copse had smiled.
Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,—
    Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,—
        Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves
She wound great drowsy wreaths and cast them down;
    The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim
        Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen
    The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,
    Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.
Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills,
    Within a dingled valley near a fall,
        Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;
Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills
    Went babbling through the wildwood's arrased hall,
        Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.

Or I have met her by some ruined mill,
    Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine,
On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled chill,
    And watched her swinging in the wild-grape vine.
While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains,
    More sad than death, or all that death can teach,
        Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms,
Where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains;
    With all her loveliness did she beseech,
        And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.

Once only in a hollow, girt with trees,
    A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain,
I glimpsed her cheeks red-berried by the breeze,
    In her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain.
And once upon an orchard's tangled path,
    Where all the golden-rod had turned to brown,
        Where russets rolled and leaves were sweet of breath,
I have beheld her 'mid her aftermath
    Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown,
          Within her gaze the deeps of life and death.

~~

Madison Cawein (1865-1914), 1887
from Kentucky Poems, 1903

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Madison Cawein biography

"October" read for LibriVox. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

Camaraderie of Leaves / JD Shirk

Camaraderie of Leaves

Leaves were falling
All afternoon
Holding on, letting go
In groups or one by one
Stirred by the autumn breeze
Red and yellow, brown and gold
Drifting just as slow, or
Spinning as they pleased
While time, who waits for none
Waited patiently for each

I walked alone
All afternoon
Holding on, letting go
Passing thoughts, one by one
Watching leaves in autumn breeze
Red and yellow, brown and gold
Walking just as slow, or
Stopping where I pleased
While time who waits for none
Waited patiently with me

~~
JD Shirk, 2023

JD Shirk Poetry

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

JD Shirk biography

Alexander Mueller, Autumn Whispers, 2015. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

October / Florence Earle Coates

October

        Sweet are the woodland notes
That gush melodious at morn from palpitating throats,
In anthems fresh as dew! Ay, they are sweet!
        But from that dim retreat
Where Evening muses through the pensive hours,
        There sometimes floats along
        A more appealing song.
So, love, thy voice breathes a diviner music in the chill
    Of autumn, when the glen is still
    And Flora's gold all tarnished on the hill.
Than in the time when merry May calls forth her bashful flowers.

~~
Florence Earle Coates (1850-1927)

from Poems, 1898 

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

Florence Earle Coates biography 

"October" read by ravenotation for LibriVox. Courtesy The 16th Cavern.

2 October poems / Annette Wynne

                October

                Black and gold and red and brown,
                    Olive, pink, and blue,    
                What a riot of a gown —
                    What a medley hue!
                What a way to go about —
                    Crimson cloak and vest!
                October is a dancer
                    Dancing down the West.


I Love These Days

Child Playing in Leaves (courtesy

 Missouri State Archive), 1990.

Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

I love these days when autumn leaves
    Are falling everywhere around,
And I can tread among the sheaves,
    And hear the crispy, crunchy sound.

I leave my dolly safe at home,
    And climb the old gray orchard wall;
The squirrels spy me where I roam,
    And scamper to the treetops tall.

And O, it is a pleasant thing
    To listen for the happy sound,
Each little leaflet tries to sing,
    That rustles softly to the ground.

And so I spend the afternoon,
    And watch the leaves go floating by
Till Mother comes to say that soon
    The dark will come into the sky.

I know when stars are overhead,
    The leaves all gather in a heap,
And while I lie quite warm in bed,
    They snuggle close and go to sleep.

~~
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]

[November]

Annette Wynne biography

Red October / Helen Gray Cone

Red October

Red October, and the slow leaf sailing;
All the maples flaring scarlet splendor,
All the dogwoods glowing crimson glory,
All the oak-leaves bronze, the beech-leaves golden:

Blue, ah blue! the reaches of the river,
Blue the sky above the russet mountain,
Blue the creek among the tawny marshes,
Blue the tart wild-grape beside the hill-road:

At our feet the burnished chestnut shining;
Scent of autumn, and the brown leaves’ rustle;
Cloudy clematis among the brambles,
Orange bittersweet along the wayside.

Days too-perfect, priceless for their passing,
Colored with the light of evanescence,
Fragrant with the breath of frailest beauty —
Days ineffable of red October!

~~
Helen Gray Cone (1859-1934)
from The Coat without a Seam, and other poems, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Helen Gray Cone biography

"Red October" read by The Reader Reads.

An October Sunset / Archibald Lampman

An October Sunset

One moment, the slim cloudflakes seem to lean
With their sad sunward faces aureoled,
And longing lips set downward brightening
To take the last sweet hand kiss of the king,
Gone down beyond the closing west acold;
Paying no reverence to the slender queen,
That like a curvèd olive leaf of gold
Hangs low in heaven, rounded toward sun,
Or the small stars that one by one unfold
Down the gray border of the night begun.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1883
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

 "An October Sunset" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

October's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for October 2026:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table

[...]

(read by Eliot)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock-ts.html

Penny's Top 20 / September 2026

    

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  4 poems, Tom Hendricks

  2.  The History of the Airplane, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  3.  Bus Ride on a Summer Night, George J. Dance

  4.  9/11, Robert Pinsky

  5.  The School Boy, William Blake

  6.  School, Winifred Welles

  7.  The Names, Billy Collins

  8.  In Memory of a Happy Day in February, Anne Brontë 

  9.  2 poems from "September's Song", Lucille Clifton

10.  Summer's End, Robert Hillyer

11.  World Trade Center, Julia Vinograd

12.  Poem for Kathy, Will Dockery

13.  Summer, Richard Chenevix Trench

14.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens

15.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

16.  The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams

17.  A Summer Night, Robert Hillyer

18.  September, Annette Wynne

19.  Early Autumn, Edward Dowden

20. In August, Ethelwyn Wetherald

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

September / Annette Wynne

September

Golden in the garden,
Golden in the glen,
Golden, golden, golden
September's here again!
Golden in the tree tops,
Golden in the sky —
Golden, golden, golden
September's going by!

~~
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]

Jonathan Billinger, Golden October, 2016. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[October]

Annette Wynne biography

Early Autumn / Edward Dowden

from In the Garden

VII.  Early Autumn

If while I sit flatter'd by this warm sun
Death came to me, and kissed my mouth and brow,
And eyelids which the warm light hovers through,
I should not count it strange. Being half won
By hours that with a tender sadness run,
Who would not softly lean to lips which woo
In the Earth's grave speech? Nor could it aught undo
Of Nature's calm observances begun
Still to be here the idle autumn day.
Pale leaves would circle down, and lie unstirr'd
Where'er they fell; the tired wind hither call
Her gentle fellows; shining beetles stray
Up their green courts; and only yon shy bird
A little bolder grow ere evenfall.

~~
Edward Dowden (1843-1913)
from Poems, 1876

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Dowden biography

  Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), Early Autumn, ca. 1866. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Summer's End / Robert Hillyer

Summer's End

And now at sunset, ripples flecked with gold
Leap lightly over the profounder blue;
The wind is from the north, and days are few
That still divide us from the winter cold.
O, it was easy in the morning dew
To make the vow that never should be old,
But now at dusk the words are not so bold,—
Thus have I learned. How fares the hour with you?

A heron rises from the trembling sedge,
His vigil at an end. Mine too is done.
A late sail twinkles on the watery edge,
And up the shore lights flicker one by one.
Seasons will change before tomorrow’s sun,
So speaks the dune-grass on the windy ledge.

~~

Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

from The Hills Give Promise, 1923

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

Robert Hillyer biography

Texel - Nature Reserve De Muy - ICE Photo compilation,

September 2010. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

2 poems from "September's Song" / Lucille Clifton

from September's Song: A Poem in Seven Days


Tuesday 9/11/01

thunder and lightning and our world
is another place     no day
will ever be the same    no blood
untouched

they know this storm in other wheres
israel    ireland    palestine
but God has blessed America
we sing

and God has blessed America
to learn that no one is exempt
the world is one   all fear
is one     all life     all death
all one

    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

Sunday Morning 9/16/01

for bailey

the st. marys river flows
as if nothing has happened

i watch it with my coffee
afraid and sad as are we all

so many ones to hate and i
cursed with long memory

cursed with the desire to understand
have never been good at hating

now this new granddaughter
born into a violent world

as if nothing has happened

and i am consumed with love
for all of it

the everydayness of bravery
of hate of fear of tragedy

of death and birth and hope
true as this river

and especially with love
bailey fredrica clifton goin

for you

~~
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)
from Voices: Compassion Education, 2011

[Licensed under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 3.0 - some rights reserved]

Lucille Clifton biography

"Tuesday 9/11/01" & "Sunday Morning 9/16/01" read by Clifton. Courtesy PBS NewsHour.

(Poem begins at 0:42)

9/11 / Robert Pinsky

9/11

We adore images, we like the spectacle
Of speed and size, the working of prodigious
Systems. So on television we watched

The terrible spectacle, repetitiously gazing
Until we were sick not only of the sight
Of our prodigious systems turned against us

But of the very systems of our watching.
The date became a word, an anniversary
That we inscribed with meanings — who keep so few,

More likely to name an airport for an actor
Or athlete than "First of May" or "Fourth of July."
In the movies we dream up, our captured heroes

Tell the interrogator their commanding officer's name
Is Colonel Donald Duck — he writes it down, code
Of a lowbrow memory so assured it's nearly

Aristocratic. Some say the doomed firefighters
Before they hurried into the doomed towers wrote
Their Social Security numbers on their forearms.

Easy to imagine them kidding about it a little,
As if they were filling out some workday form.
Will Rogers was a Cherokee, a survivor

Of expropriation. A roper, a card. For some,
A hero. He had turned sixteen the year
That Frederick Douglass died. Douglass was twelve

When Emily Dickinson was born. Is even Donald
Half-forgotten?— Who are the Americans, not
A people by blood or religion? As it turned out,

The donated blood not needed, except as meaning.
And on the other side that morning the guy
Who shaved off all his body hair and screamed

The name of God with his boxcutter in his hand.
O Americans — as Marianne Moore would say,
Whence is our courage? Is what holds us together

A gluttonous dreamy thriving? Whence our being?
In the dark roots of our music, impudent and profound?–
Or in the Eighteenth Century clarities

And mystic Masonic totems of the Founders:
The Eye of the Pyramid watching over us,
Hexagram of Stars protecting the Eagle's head

From terror of pox, from plague and radiation.
And if they blow up the Statue of Liberty–
Then the survivors might likely in grief, terror

And excess build a dozen more, or produce
A catchy song about it, its meaning as beyond
Meaning as those symbols, or Ray Charles singing "America

The Beautiful." Alabaster cities, amber waves,
Purple majesty. The back-up singers in sequins
And high heels for a performance — or in the studio

In sneakers and headphones, engineers at soundboards,
Musicians, all concentrating, faces as grave
With purpose as the harbor Statue herself.

~~
Robert Pinsky
from Voices: Compassion Education, 2011

[Licensed under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 3.0 - some rights reserved]

Robert Pinsky biography

 

National Park Service, New York a few minutes after the September 11 attacks, 2001.

Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

The History of the Airplane / Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The History of the Airplane

And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth when their wonderful
flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk into the kingdom of birds
but the parliament of birds was freaked out by this man-made bird
and fled to heaven

And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and
flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather
helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not
even though he circled Versailles

And then the famous Flying Clipper took off in the opposite
direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves
were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky

And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns
and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism
but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima

And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and
these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any
real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings
and like Icarus crash to earth

And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying
bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third
Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of
peace

And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st
century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and
stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating
heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no
parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part
of the scorched earth of the world

And a wind of ashes blows across the land
And for one long moment in eternity
There is chaos and despair

And buried loves and voices
Cries and whispers
Fill the air
Everywhere 

~~
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
from Voices: Compassion Education, 2011

[Licensed under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 3.0 - some rights reserved]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti biography

"The History of the Airplane" read by Ferlinghetti. Courtesy Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Topic.

Penny's Poetry Blog's poem for September 11

 

The Penny Blog's poem for September 11: 

World Trade Center, by Julia Vinograd

I am an old woman in a black dress

Kneeling in the ruins, clutching my shoulders,

teeth clenched and lips drawn back in a snarl

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2022/09/world-trade-center-julie-vinograd.html

School / Winifred Welles

School

His seat was by a window. So he dreamed.
How could he study while the sunlight gleamed
In small, sweet shapes, like wild things tame enough
To dart to him and touch his hands for love?
While there were profiles carved in every cloud
To mark as grim or ludicrous or proud,
And agile shadowings to writhe and crawl
Like ghostly spiders up and down the wall,
He could not help but turn their way to look.
His eyes, that would not follow down his book
The muddy trudgings of deliberate words,
Reflected blue and silver flights of birds.
You would not think there was so much to trace
Of wonderment on just a window space.
But once, when a frail scrap of paper moon
Enchanted him from ten o'clock, till noon,
They moved him to the middle of the room.
He learned his lesson then for very gloom,
Until, came glowing to a nearby chair,
A little girl with sunset in her hair.
His soul recolored. The forlorn dreams came
To warm themselves once more at this new flame.
He pushed aside the dusty Greek. He had
A different way to read the Iliad.
While through cold ashes others groped to learn,
He lit the towers of Troy and saw them burn.

~~
Winifred Welles (1893-1939)
from The Hesitant Heart, 1919

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

Winifred Welles biography

 "School" read by A stranger to a stranger.

The School Boy / William Blake

The School Boy

I love to rise in a summer morn, 
    When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
    And the skylark sings with me:
    O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,-
    O! It drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
    The little ones spend the day
    In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
    And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
    Nor sit in learning's bower,
    Worn through with dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
    Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
    But droop his tender wing,
    And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,
    And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
    Of their joy in the springing day,
    By sorrow and care's dismay,-

How shall the summer arise in joy,
    Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
    Or bless the mellowing year,
    When the blasts of winter appear?

~~
William Blake (1757-1827)
from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Blake biography

"The School Boy" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

September's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for September 2026:

The Names, by Billy Collins

[...]

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark

[...]

(read by Billy Collins)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-names-billy-collins.html

Penny's Top 20 / August 2026

   

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Afterglow, George J. Dance

  2.  4 poems, Tom Hendricks

  3.  In Memory of a Happy Day in February, Anne Brontë 

  4.  Bus Ride on a Summer Night, George J. Dance

  5.  August, Annette Wynne

  6.  Poem for Kathy, Will Dockery

  7.  Morning of My Life, Will Dockery

  8.  On Mulberry Drive, Will Dockery

  9.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

10.  August, Edmund Gosse

11.  Love-in-Idleness, Jane G. Austin

12.  "The Orient, Half Morocco, 8vo", Ruth Comfort Mitchell

13.  A Summer Night, Robert Hillyer

14.  The Upstairs Room, Weldon Kees

15.  Tired of Waiting, Will Dockery

16.  At the Gates of Dawn, George J. Dance

17.  Summer, Richard Chenevix Trench

18.  In August, Ethelwyn Wetherald

19.  Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

20. Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

Summer / Richard Chenevix Trench

Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803-1902), Heat Showers in August, 1857. Wikimedia Commons.

from The Seasons

Summer

Now seems all nature to conspire,
As to dissolve the world in fire,

Which dies among its odorous sweets,
A Phoenix on its funeral pyre.

Simoom breathes hotly from the waste,
The green earth quits its green attire;

Floats o'er the plain the liquid heat,
Cheating the traveller's fond desire —

Illusion fair of lake and stream,
Receding as he draweth nigher.

Ice is more precious now than gold,
Snow more than silver men desire.

'Tis far to seek unfailing wells
For tender maid or agèd sire;

Men know the worth of water now,
And learn to prize God's blessing higher;

The shallow pools have disappeared,
Caked into iron is the mire.

Through clouds of dust the crimson sun
Glares on the earth in lurid ire;

The parchèd earth with thirsty lips
Is gasping, ready to expire.

Oh happy, who by liquid streams
In shady gardens can retire,

Where murmuring falls and whispering trees
Sweet slumber to invite conspire;

Or where he may deceive the time
With volume sage, or pensive lyre.

~~

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1866)
from Poems from Eastern Sources, 1842

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Richard Chenevix Trench biography

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

("Summer" begins at 2:51.)

In August / Ethelwyn Wetherald

In August

Now when the grove is stifled to the core,
    And all the parchèd grass is summer-killed,
    I think of vehement March, and how she filled
These arid roadsides with a murmurous pour
Of rushing streams from an exhaustless store.
    This breathless air to tropic slumber stilled,
    Recalls those early passionate winds that thrilled
The spirit, blending with the water’s roar.

Just as in rich and dusty-leavèd age
    The soul goes back to brood on swelling buds
    Of hope, desire, and dream, in childhood's clime,
So I turn backward to the spring-lit page,
    And hear with freshening heart the deep-voiced floods,
    That to the winds give their melodious rhyme.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from Tangled in Stars, 1902

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

Patrick Roper, Dry fields during heatwave, August 2018. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

See also: "A March Night" by Ethelwyn Wetherald

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography

"The Orient, Half Morocco, 8vo" / Ruth Comfort Mitchell

"The Orient, Half Morocco, 8v0"

Courtesy Internet Archive.

She bought a book, once, with the butter money —

A wild, undreamed of, reckless thing to do!
(So much to manage for the winter schooling;
That split in Hannah Mary's Sunday shoe. . . .)

The cover bravely flaunted gold and scarlet,—
Gave hint and promise of the hidden feast,
Fine-grained and limber, sleek beneath the fingers,
Frankly symbolic of the gorgeous east.

She wrapt it up and laid it in the bureau;
She knew she wouldn't get to read it soon,—
Not while she had the harvesters to cook for,
Tho' maybe ... of a Sunday afternoon. . . .

How often, then, her thoughts went winging to it,
Thro' all the cumbered days she had to wait,
Till, in a scanty hour of hard-won leisure,
She entered shyly thro' the latticed gate:

Dim harims . . . sultans . . . yashmaks . . . cloudy nargillehs,—
Strange sounding words from far-off story lands;
The farm-house fades; the Wishing Carpet bears her
To Kairowan, across the golden sands.

Since then, thro' all the somber woof of living,
For her the mystic Orient weaves its spells;
Faintly, at dawn, down thro' the dairy pasture,
She seems to hear the chime of temple bells.

Now she can see across the piles of mending —
(There is a window in her prison tower!)
Beyond the baking and the baby tending 

The Mueddin calls across the sunset hour.

When the fierce August sun in grudging mercy,
Threatening worse torments for the morrow, sets,
The battered barns, the tanks, the gilded hay cocks,
Are distant domes and towers and minarets.

The sullen farmer, summoned in to supper,
Weary and silent as he slouches down,
To her fresh eyes becomes a mighty Caliph
Whose minions tremble at his slightest frown.

Subtlest of all — of course they do not mark it —
She in herself is gently touched with grace —
The swifter carriage of her toil-warped figure,
The ghost of girlhood in her furrowed face.

Sometimes they have to call her twice, and sharply;
(They see her, and they think that she is there!)
Thro' all the homely clamor, she is hearing
Oh, very near and clear, The Call to Prayer!

~~
Ruth Comfort Mitchell (1882-1954)
from The Night Court, and other verse, 1916

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

Ruth Comfort Mitchell biography

The Upstairs Room / Weldon Kees

The Upstairs Room

It must have been in March the rug wore through.
Now the day passes and I stare
At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,
At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows,
Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes
Stumble and scrape and fall
To the floor my faher stained,
The new blood streaming from his head. The drift
Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that gun's
Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endures.
In March the rug was ragged as the past. The thread
Rots like the lives we fasten on. Now it is August,
And the floor is blank, worn smooth,
And, for my life, imperishable.

~~
Weldon Kees (1914-1955)
from Poetry, August 1948

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Weldon Kees biography

"The Upstairs Room" courtesy PoemsBeingRead.

(Poem begins at 1:00)

A Summer Night / Robert Hillyer

A Summer Night

The night is a shrill rhythm of insects,
The lighted windows that showed through the leaves
One hy one go out. “Goodnight,”
A voice murmurs in the shadow of vines,
“Goodnight,” and for ever is in the voice.
An old violinist crosses the Fenway
And watches the lights go out. He can almost 

Hear the sigh of the weary bodies.
A freight train puffs ponderously, far
Away to the eastward, and down the highway
A belated motor crowded with singing
Revelers careless of slumber passes
With raucous shout that ribbons to silence.
If only God would step from the stars
And lead his own composition, if only
An old violinist might put his bow
And his violin away for ever.
He hears from under his arm where he clutches
The case, the twang of a plucked string;
The damp of the Fens is chill on the sinews
Of old men and old violins.
But the crickets and treetoads make sweet din
In the meadows, the fireflies spiral downward
Like dropping fragments of moonlight. Strange,
These small accompaniments of desire
Outlive desire itself and its memory.
The city would wholly sleep but for me,
He says, but for me and the arc-lights buzzing
And twitching uneasily in their globes
Like thoughts in a mind when the sun has gone.
He draws from his pocket a thick gold watch
And holds it up. It is half-past two.
Foolish for one to consult the time
On a golden dial this summer night 

Who might more wisely be counting the leaves
Of seventy scattered calendars.

~~

Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

from The Gates of the Compass, 1930

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

Robert Hillyer biography

Eden, Janine and Jim, Night on Third Avenue, 2020. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Love-in-Idleness / Jane G. Austin

Love-in-Idleness

A time for everything? O yes,
And August is the time, I guess,
To gather Love-in-idleness.
Am I not right? Fair one, confess!

Where shall we find it? Everywhere;
It floats upon the sultry air,
It glows through all the garden fair,
Tangles our feet in rosy snare.

How shall we know it? O most sweet,
Thou'lt know it by thy pulses' beat,
Thou'lt know it by the fragrance fleet
What time its flower and fading meet.

It fades so soon? Is not that best?
It dies ere use has dimmed its zest,
It dies in all its grace confessed,
Its hour of glory is its rest.

Hail, August monarch! Lo thy slaves bow down
And weave of Love-in-Idleness thy crown.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Bob Collowan, A tub of love-in-idleness (viola tricolor) 

[detail], 2013. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[January]

Jane G. Austin biography

Bus Ride on a Summer Night / George J. Dance

Bus Ride on a Summer Night

Bus crammed, I squeeze and stumble to a seat,
Loathing the heat, rank sweat, and noise, so I
Avert my gaze, stare at a cobalt sky
And miles of matching boxes on the street,

Screen shot from YouTube.

Which cut to a new picture suddenly –
Black velvet crossed by lines of red and white
Clear shining beads, bright rosaries of light,
Stretching past the horizon towards infinity . . .

I see the threads that run through every bead,
Each prayer and fear, each joy and agony,
Entangling into one humanity:
One flesh, one blood, from one uncommon seed –

It's passed; I shift, relax into my seat,
And breathe in human life, so warm, so sweet.

~~
George J. Dance, 2007
from Doggerel, and other doggerel, 2015

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography 

August / Edmund Gosse

August

The soul is like a song-bird, and must hold
    Its silent August, or its heart would break;
    From the hot rushes of the unruffled lake
No warbler pipes, and where the elms enfold
Blackbird and thrush, no music is outrolled;
    They wait in solitude and voiceless ache,
    Till, with serenest winds, September wake
The enchanted pipes and wingéd age of gold.
So with the heart, and therefore blame thou not
    Brisk lover, that thy pensive maid is mute,
        Wandering beside thee with a downcast air;
She is not heedless, nor thy love forgot,
    But passion dons her dreamy autumn suit
        To wake renewed in beauty, freshly fair.

~~
Edmund Gosse (1849-1928)
from Firdausi in Exile, and other poems, 1885

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

Edmund Gosse biography

Peder Severin Krøyer (1851–1909), Summer evening on the beach at Skagen, 

The painter and his wife, 1899. Wikimedia Commons.

August's featured poem

   

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for August 2026:

August, by Annette Wynne

August days are hot and still,

Not a breath on house or hill

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2020/08/august-annette-wynne.html

Penny's second (and third and fourth) million

 

It took 16 years, from our 2010 founding to September 2025, for Penny's Poetry Pages to reach 1 million page views. It took 10 months to gain our next million.  

We ended 2025 with almost 1.2 million views. That was up to 1.4 million by March, 1.8 million by May, and 1.95 million by the end of June. On July 12, we received our 2 millionth view. And there was more to come, as total page views continued to climb, first up to 3 million, and then over 4 million before month's end. 

All told, the blog received 2,391,201 page views in July alone – more views in a month than in all of the previous months combined.

For years PPB was trapped in a vicious circle: few visitors led to being ignored by search engines, which led to few visitors in the next month, and so on. Now it appears that the opposite is happening. After we reached 500,000 views, we began appearing in Google search, and viewership began to climb, from under 100 visits a day to more than 1,000. That led to other search engines like bing carrying us as well. As a result the number of visitors kept increasing, with daily page views sometimes as high as 10,000. 

This increasing availability on search engines has expanded not only our reach but our range, giving PPP an increasingly international profile. A glance at Google's statistics for this week illustrates that well: While our biggest source of visitors is still the United States (with 238,000 page visits), we also received more than 100,000 visits each from Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Germany. (Canada is not listed, alas.)

But search engines are just one part of the story; there have been other factors working to boost our viewership.  One that deserves acknowledgement is JLA Forums. 

After Google stopped providing a web portal to Usenet in 2004, JLA Forums stepped into the breach and began building an archive of selected Usenet groups. As per their policy of not allowing most external links, though, JLA omitted virtually all of the promotional posts that were a big part of the Usenet poetry groups in the early days (such as Rick Lupert's "Poetry Super Highway" notices). Originally they wanted to omit the PPB promos as well; however, when contacted by some of our readers, they quickly decided on an alternative way of dealing with them. 

Today virtually all past PPB posts appear on JLA Forums, and all new PPB poems are promoted there, complete with links to the blog. Rather than going to the blog, though, readers are directed to a mirror site where they can read it right on JLA Forums. In this way JLA gets the "click" or page view (and so does PPB: win-win). With at least one Usenet group getting as many as 100,000 visits a month on JLA  (so I've been told), that makes a big difference in the reach of our promotions. 

There are other factors in our growth, but let them wait for another day; I expect to be announcing further millions in the future. While this jump in numbers may be temporary, and could always collapse back to what it used to be, I am confident that our new mass viewership is here to stay, and has only just begun. 

Penny's Top 20 / July 2026

  

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Tired of Waiting, Will Dockery

  2.  In the High Hills, Maxwell Struthers Burt

  3.  March, Edwin Arnold

  4.  Green, Paul Verlaine

  5.  To the Spring, John Davies

  6.  Vowels – Voyelles, Arthur Rimbaud

  7.  Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (IV-V), Ezra Pound

  8.  Flying Back in a Dream, JD Shirk

  9.  Poem for Kathy, Will Dockery

10.  Appeal, John Frederic Herbin

11.  A boat, beneath a sunny sky, Lewis Carroll

12.  To Helen [1848] , Edgar Allan Poe 

13.  Cedros, Jane G. Austin

14.  July, Annette Wynne

15.  The Mower to the Glow-Worms, Andrew Marvell

16.  June, Edgar Guest

17.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

18.  Summer Morn in New Hampshire, Claude Mackay

19.  July in the West, James Newton Matthews

20. The Voice, Theodore Roethke

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

July in the West / James Newton Matthews

July in the West

DAY

A rhythm of reapers; a flashing
Of steels in the meadows; a lashing
Of sheaves in the wheatlands; a glitter
Of grain-builded streets, and a twitter
Of birds in a motionless sky,—
And that is July!

A rustle of corn-leaves; a tinkle
Of bells on the hills; a twinkle
Of sheep in the lowlands; a bevy
Of bees where the clover is heavy;
A butterfly blundering by,—
And that is July!


NIGHT

A moon-flooded prairie; a straying
Of light-hearted lovers; a baying
Of far away watchdogs; a dreaming 

Of brown-fisted farmers; a gleaming
Of fireflies eddying nigh,—
And that is July!

A babble of brooks that deliver
Their flower-purpled waves to the river;
A moan in the marshes; in thickets
A dolorous droning of crickets,
Attuned to a whippoorwill's cry,—
And that is July!

~~
James Newton Matthews (1852-1910)
from The Lute of Life, 1911

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Stubbs (1724-1806), Reapers, 1785. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

James Newton Matthews biography

The Mower to the Glow-Worms / Andrew Marvell

The Mower to the Glow-Worms

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;

Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass’s fall;

Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.

~~
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
from Miscellaneous Poems, 1681

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Andrew Marvell biography

"The Mower to the Glow-Worms" read for Ming Aretê.

The Voice / Theodore Roethke

The Voice

One feather is a bird,
I claim; one tree, a wood;
In her low voice I heard
More than a mortal should;
And so I stood apart,
Hidden in my own heart.

And yet I roamed out where
Those notes went, like the bird,
Whose thin song hung in air,
Diminished, yet still heard:
I lived with open sound,
Aloft, and on the ground.

That ghost was my own choice,
The shy cerulean bird;
It sang with her true voice,
And it was I who heard
A slight voice reply;
I heard; and only I.

Desire exults the ear:
Bird, girl, and ghostly tree,
The earth, the solid air –
Their slow song sang in me;
The long noon pulsed away,
Like any summer day.

~~
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
from Words for the Wind, 1957

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Theodore Roethke biography

"The Voice" read by Theodore Roethke. Courtesy Theodore Roethke - Topic.

(Poem begins at 1:40)

Summer Morn in New Hampshire / Claude McKay

 

Summer Morn in New Hampshire

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
    I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
    Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
    Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
    And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
    The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
    The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
    But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
    And I was blind with hunger for your love.

~~
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
from Harlem Shadows, 1922

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

Claude McKay biography

"Summer Morn in New Hampshire" read by Narad.

Courtesy The Mother & Sri Aurobindo: E-library.