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.  Poem for Kathy, Will Dockery

  9.  Flying Back in a Dream, JD Shirk

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.

To Helen [1848] / Edgar Allan Poe

To Helen

I saw thee once — once only — years ago:
I must not say how many — but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness and slumber,
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe —
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death —
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half-reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd—alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight —
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow),
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me—(O Heaven!— O God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)—
Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked —
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All — all expired save thee — save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes —
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them — they were the world to me.
I saw but them — saw only them for hours —
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie unwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep —
How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go — they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me — they lead me through the years.

They are my ministers — yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle —
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

~~
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), 1848
from Works, 1850

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edgar Allan Poe biography

"To Helen" read by Roy Macready.

Cedros / Jane G. Austin

Cedros

Between the rows of yellowing corn
Our patient donkeys paced along,
All in the glorious summer morn,
            At Cedros.
Afar we saw the glimmering shine
Of league on league of sparkling brine,
We breathed an ether rare and fine,
            At Cedros.

A laughing troop of golden hours
Strewed all our sunny path with flowers:
The blackbird's song dropped down in showers,
            At Cedros,
And, catching up the gladsome strain,
We sang, each answering each again,
And gayly shook the bridal rein,
            At Cedros.

That day can never come again,
Yet still I feel the tender pain
That thrilled my heart with that refrain,
            At Cedros.
I see the sapphire sea and sky,
The yellowing fields before me lie,
I hear the joyous melody,
            At Cedros.

Oh, happy hour! Oh, joyous time!
When life was in its summer prime,
And seemed a thing almost sublime,
            At Cedros.
The future comes with joy or pain,
But never shall we three again
Ride through the fields of golden grain,
Singing that sad and sweet refrain,
            At Cedros.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Angrense, Alagoa Bay, Cedros, Flores, Azores, 2007. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

[August]

Jane G. Austin biography

Flying Back in a Dream / JD Shirk

Flying Back In A Dream

We ran free, among the trees
Out to the open fields
Dandelions, fences too
We crossed without a trip
A flying leap, a landing splash
In the stream like wilding fish

The hill was high enough
And we, just fast enough
To dare each other's wish
At first a longer jump or two
But then because of dreams
Of things we couldn't hold,
Things that fade like morning mist;
Hand in hand, away we flew

Above the doubts and thrilled
To fears of what we knew
Could not be real, or ever last
When time would tell, and bring
The past, back to the dreams
Of things we held between
Our tightly, trusting hands
And we would feel the earth
Again, beneath our tiring feet

Where streams run wide and fences
Crossed, are slow climbed back again
When dandelions in the dusk
Fold up their daytime wear
Dark trees begin their silent
Call, to stars somewhere, so near . . .

~~
JD Shirk, 2024

JD Shirk Poetry

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

JD Shirk biography

E.J. Rawleigh, Boys running out of their school, Ontario, ca. 1920. Wikimedia Commons.

July / Annette Wynne

July

July's for Independence Day,
For flags and speeches and for play,
For hiding deep in meadow grass
And watching flying creatures pass,
For sailing boats on little seas,
Where just the smallest summer breeze
Can blow; for picking flowers any day;
July comes for flags and play.

~~
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]

MissLunaRose12, Art by an autistic 11-year-old depicting people lighting sparklers. 

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[August]

Annette Wynne biography

July's featured poem

  

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for July 2026:

A boat, beneath a sunny sky, by Lewis Carroll

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July
[...]

(read by Tom O'Bedlam)

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2013/07/life-is-but-dream.html

Penny's Top 20 / June 2026

 

Penny's Top 20

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

  1.  Song, Trumbull Stickney

  2.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  3.  Mid-August, Duncan Campbell Scott

  4.  Adlestrop, Edward Thomas

  5.  June, Annette Wynne

  6.  Sketch, F.S. Flint

  7.  The Withered Leaf in June, F.M. MacKeracher

  8.  June Night, Hazel Hall

  9.  Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas

10.  The Wind Blows Where It Will, JD Shirk

11.  Romance Novel – Roman, Arthur Rimbaud

12.  June Rain, Richard Aldington

13.  Dandelions, George Sulzbach

14.  The Dance of Death, Jane G. Austin

15.  Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

16.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

17.  Skating, William Wordsworth

18.  Always There, George J. Dance

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

20. My Father, Ann Taylor

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

Appeal / John Frederic Herbin

Crisco 1492,  Great Canadian Flag, Windsor, ON, 2025-06-22.  CC BY SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Appeal

Canadians! raise aloft your country’s flag,
Nor low to earth, nor lifeless see it drag.
Up! till each sign in gentle winds unread,
Meets breezes strong, and every fold is spread.
Its place is high, above the feeble gust
That dims its color with a servile dust.
Among the storms, there see it proudly move
The emblem of your country and your love —

Where all its noble length becomes unfurled
By winds that shake the proudest of the world.
Then will the nations read upon its face,
Whatever, once, their country and their race,
One hope and one ambition closely tie

This people to a common destiny.

A bond of kindred makes your pulses beat,
Frank, Saxon, Kelt, with triple force and heat;
Your veins no longer separate currents run,
Your hearts now animate and beat as one.
Oh noble land and nation! growing strong,
One sky and flag is yours, whatever tongue.
To hold and crown your rampart and your hall
With zeal and valour, needs the strength of all.
My countrymen, your fathers’ valiant swords,
Their kings’ decrees, their sages’ golden words,
The world through cycles down have ruled and led —

A rich inheritance comes from the dead.
Their wisdom and their light are for your hand,
Blessed with the rule of this most fruitful land.

Thick years will come, sprung from the seed you sow;
And for those harvest-days that quickly flow,
The nation walks a-field casting the seed
Of worth and power, the future’s urgent need.
The sun of progress shines; and day full blest
And loud with labor from the east and west,
Hangs over you. Across the western sea,
Mankind new-born obeyed its destiny,
Wandering westward like a current’s trend;

In Canada the roadway hath its end.
The marching centuries of tribe and race
Around the earth, on this find halting-place.

Toward either coast the ocean currents glide;
Upon their waves your sailors homeward ride.
No mimic ships are yours, the keels are deep;
Your sons are brave when angry waters leap.
A man is this whose axe doth clear the ground;
And where he smites the forest tumbles round.
This is a warrior, the first to bleed,
The foremost in the rank of noble deed.
At helm, with axe, before the foemen’s guns,
You live and die your fathers’ worthy sons.
Proud of your flag, see! how your praises swing
It straight and clear, to nations heralding.

~~

John Frederic Herbin (1860-1923)

from Canada, and other poems, 1891

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

John Frederic Herbin biography

June / Edgar Guest

June

June is here, the month of roses, month of brides and month of bees,
Weaving garlands for our lassies, whispering love songs in the trees,
Painting scenes of gorgeous splendor, canvases no man could brush,
Changing scenes from early morning till the sunset's crimson flush.

June is here, the month of blossoms, month of roses white and red,
Wet with dew and perfume-laden, nodding wheresoe'er we tread;
Come the bees to gather honey, all the lazy afternoon;
Flowers and lassies, men and meadows, love alike the month of June.

Month of love and month of sunshine, month of happiness and song,
Month that cheers the sad wayfarer as he plods the road along;
Spreading out a velvet carpet, green and yellow, for his feet,
And affording for his rest hours many a cool and sweet retreat.

~~
Edgar Guest (1881-1959)
from Just Folks, 1917

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

Edgar Guest biography

Tamara Menzies, Bridal Bouquet, 2017. CC0 1.0 public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

The Dance of Death / Jane G. Austin

The Dance of Death

 
And now the old world holds high holiday
And pranks herself in garments brave and gay;
June roses burst from folded buds of May;
The air is full of perfume and of blithe birds' lay.
Come then, my heart, let us fare forth with these,
In all this joy dull sorrow finds surcease;
My sullen lute, beneath these blooming trees
And swept by fingers of the odorous breeze,
Sure thy mute strings will wake to life to-day
And sing to June a blithesome roundelay.

From out the wood there crept a shadow still,
Before it, died the sunshine off the hill;
It swept the lute, and on its icy breath
Faltered a song, a song of Love and Death.

O dance, ye rose-crowned hours of June,
    Beneath the merry sun,
And dance beneath the loving moon
    When jocund day is done.

Bright, bright, the sunshine and the moon
    But bitter black the shade:
Beneath thy roses, blithesome June,
    Are there no dead men laid?

Dim wraiths of dead and buried Junes,
    Sweet dreams and hearts aglow,
Of brighter suns and sweeter moons
    Of hopes dead long ago?

O joyous June, heap high your flowers,
    You cannot hide the graves beneath;
Sing, birds, and dance, ye merry hours,

    Tread with my ghosts the Dance of Death.

With one wild note of rapture or of pain
The lute-strings snapped and all was still again.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

FrDr, Danse Macabre (Tallinn), 2016. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[July]

Jane G. Austin biography