June's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured poem for May 2025:

Metric Figure, by William Carlos Williams

There is a bird in the poplars! –

It is the sun!

The leaves are little yellow fish

Swimming in the river

[...]

(read for Reader's Utopia)

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

Penny's Top 20 / May 2025

  

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  On Mulberry Drive, Will Dockery

  2.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  3.  Spring Again, George J. Dance

  4.  May Wind, Sara Teasdale

  5.  The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 

  6.  An April Shower, George J. Dance

  7.  April on the Battlefields, Leonora Speyer

  8.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  9.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

10.  Youth and Nature, Philip Bourke Marston

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

12.  Song on May Morning, John Milton

13.  Philomel, Richard Barnfield

14.  Skating, William Wordsworth

15.  Waiting for the May, Denis McCarthy

16.  The Entering May, Ralph Waldo Emerson

17.  The Town Rabbit in the Country, Camilla Doyle

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

19.  May Day, Sara Teasdale

20. North Wind in October, Robert Bridges

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

May / Folgore de San Geminiano

from Of the Months

May

I give you horses for your games in May,
    And all of them well trained unto the course,–
    Each docile, swift, erect, a goodly horse;
With armor on their chests, and bells at play
Between their brows, and pennons fair and gay;
    Fine nets, and housings meet for warriors,
    Emblazoned with the shields ye claim for yours;
Gules, argent, or, all dizzy at noonday.
And spears shall split, and fruit go flying up
In merry counterchange for wreaths that drop
    From balconies and casements far above;
And tender damsels with young men and youths
Shall kiss together on the cheeks and mouths
    And every day be glad with joyful love.

~~
Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

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

The Town Rabbit in the Country / Camilla Doyle

The Town Rabbit in the Country

Rabbit on Lawn, Enoch Leung, 2019. 

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Three hours ago in Seven Dials
She lived awaiting all the trials
That haunt her race, but now shall be
Freed on the lawn to play with me.

In the dim shop her eyes were grey
And languid; but in this bright day
To a full circle each dilates,
And turns the blue of Worcester plates
In the unaccustomed sun; she stares
At strange fresh leaves; the passing airs,
Outstretching from her box's brink,
She gulps as if her nose could drink.

Now o'er the edge she scrambles slow,
Too pleased to know which way to go –
Half dazed with pleasure she explores
This sunny, eatable out-of-doors.

Then shakes and tosses up her ears
Like plumes upon bold cavaliers –
The dust flies out as catherine-wheels
Throw sparks as round she twirls and reels –
Her spine it quivers like an eel's –
Over her head she flings her heels,
Comes down askew, then waltzes till
She must reverse or else feel ill –
Reverses, then lies down and pants

As one who has no further wants,
Staring with half-believing eyes
Like souls that wake in Paradise.

~~
Camilla Doyle (1888-1944)
from The Best Poems of 1923, 1924

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

Camilla Doyle biography

Philomel / Richard Barnfield

Philomel

Rufous (common) Nightingale, 

photo by Carlos Delgado, 2015. 

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

As it fell upon a day 

In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap and birds did sing,
Trees did grow and plants did spring;
Everything did banish moan
Save the Nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all forlorn
Lean’d her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry;
Tereu, Tereu! by and by;
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs so lively shown
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah! thought I, thou mourn’st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee:
King Pandion he is dead,
All thy friends are lapp’d in lead;
All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.

~~
Richard Barnfield (1574-1627)
from the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900
(edited by Arthur Quiller Couch), 1918

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[See also: "Philomela" by Philip Sidney]

Richard Barnfield biography

Youth and Nature / Philip Bourke Marston

Youth and Nature

Is this the sky, and this the very earth
    I had such pleasure in when I was young?
    And can this be the identical sea-song,
Heard once within the storm-cloud's awful girth,
When a great cloud from silence burst to birth;
    And winds to whom it seemed I did belong
    Made the keen blood in me run swift and strong
With irresistible, tempestuous mirth?

Are these the forests loved of old so well,
    Where on May nights enchanted music was?
    Are these the fields of soft, delicious grass;
These the old hills with secret things to tell?
O my dead youth, was this inevitable,
    That with thy passing, Nature, too, should pass?

~~
Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887)
from Collected Poems, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Philip Bourke Marston biography

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

On Mulberry Drive / Will Dockery

On Mulberry Drive 

On Mulberry Drive
walking in the Spring rain.
Except for signs of a driveway
nothing else remains.
They took it all away
the house and the hill.
That spot we shared in '78
all the love and thrills.

Oblivion is coming
it's written in the stone.
It really starts out
on the day that you're born.
Live every second
dance what you've captured.
Shadowville Mythos...
is on the last chapter.

On Mulberry Drive
on another mystery play.
Almost fifty years ago
still seems like yesterday.
That long driveway
now goes into space.
We thought we'd live forever
not dead and disgraced.

Darkness is falling
archived in a book.
It really gets smaller
the closer you look.
Breathe deeply my darling
smoke them if you have to.
Shadowville Mythos...
is on the last chapter.

On Mulberry Drive
now the hail's coming down.
Taps on the umbrella
as I'm walking around.
I remember that fireplace
I remember her smile.
I remember Edgewood Park
where we'd laugh for a while.

In the living room
I heard a ghost moan,
As I talked with the Cavalier
on a land line telephone.
Relive every second
these memories you've captured.
Shadowville Mythos...
is on the last chapter.

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

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

Will Dockery biography

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