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.

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

Do not go gentle into that good night / Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~~
Dylan Thomas (1914-1954)
from Collected Poems, 1952

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

Dylan Thomas biography 

"Do not go gentle into that good night" rccited by Michael Sheen Courtesy National Theatre.

First Day of Spring / F.W. Harvey

First Day of Spring

{To A.E.S.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F.W. Harvey biography

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

A November Grave / James B. Kenyon

A November Grave

The grey clouds gather, fold on fold,
Above the blurred and dripping wold;
The light is growing pale and cold,
    And ghostly mists steal o'er the plain.

A robin in the elm is crying;
About the eaves the wind is sighing;
O dismal day! my heart is lying
    In yon fresh grave drenched with the rain.

~~
James B. Kenyon (1858-1924)
from At the Gate of Dreams, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

James B. Kenyon biography

Fresh grave on rainy night (screenshot).

How Sleep the Brave / William Collins

Ode

How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallow'd mold,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there!

~~
William Collins (1721-1759), 1746 

from Poems, 1898

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Collins biography

"How Sleep the Brave" read by Joshua David Robinson. Courtesy  Lincoln’s Cottage .

The March / J.C. Squire

The March

I heard a voice that cried, "Make way for those who died!"
And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled;
And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode,
In mute and measured march a hundred thousand dead.

A hundred thousand dead, with firm and noiseless tread,
All shadowy-grey yet solid, with faces grey and ghast,
And by the house they went, and all their brows were bent
Straight forward; and they passed, and passed, and passed, and passed.

But O there came a place, and O there came a face,
That clenched my heart to see it, and sudden turned my way;
And in the Face that turned I saw two eyes that burned,
Never-forgotten eyes, and they had things to say.

Like desolate stars they shone one moment, and were gone,
And I sank down and put my arms across my head,
And felt them moving past, nor looked to see the last,
In steady silent march, our hundred thousand dead.

~~
J.C. Squire (1884-1958)
from Poems: First series, 1918

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

J.C. Squire biography

Samuel J. Hood Studio, Australian troops marching in Sydney, 1915. Wikimedia Commons.

See also: "The March of the Dead," by Robert Service

October / Louise Driscoll

October

When my hills stand ablaze with gold and red,
    And I can hear the harsh-voiced leader cry
    As wild geese, like a necklace on the sky,
Are seen for a brief moment overhead,
Then I remember what my lover said.
    No bird of Spring, however joyously
    Singing arpeggios on a lilac tree,
Can speak to me so plainly of the dead.
    October, bringing gaudy mysteries,
With smell of burning leaves and dripping sound
As frost freed nuts come dropping to the ground,
    With late, red apples glowing on the trees
    Like lanterns at some feast of memories,
The spell of death and silence has unbound.

~~
Louise Driscoll (1875-1957)
from The Garden of the West, 1922

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

Louise Driscoll biography

John S. Turner, A skein of geese flying above Tesco, Broughton Park (detail).

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. 

A Summer Morning / George Henry Boker

XXXVIII

With song of birds, and hum of bees,
    And odorous breath of swinging flowers,
With fluttering herbs and swaying trees,
    Begin the early morning hours.

The warm tide of the southern air
    Swims round, with gentle rise and fall,
And, burning through a golden glare,
    The sun looks broadly over all.

So fair and fresh the landscape stands,
    So vital, so beyond decay,
It looks as though God's shaping hands
    Had just been raised and drawn away.

The holy baptism of the rain
    Yet lingers, like a special grace;
For I can see an aureole plain
    About the world's transfigured face.

The moments come in dreamy bliss,
    In dreamy bliss they pause and pass:
It seems not hard, on days like this,
    Dear Lord, to lie beneath the grass!

~~

George Henry Boker (1823-1890)
from The Book of the Dead, 1882

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Henry Boker biography

Lowdown, "Manor Park in Markowice", 2013. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

A June Day / Philip Bourke Marston

A June Day

The month is June, but all the sky is grey,
    And to the weary earth seems leaning low;
    There is no little breath of wind to blow
The searching perfume of these flowers away
Which climbing round the window peer and stay;
    The thrush sings, where the branches thickly grow;
    The day moves by, with heavy feet and slow;
"Death endeth all," the stillness seems to say.

But Love shall come before Death's nuptial hour;
    There sits my queen and silent, pondering what?
Sees she, as I, Love's joy-environed bower,
    Where sweet conspiring things one sweeter plot,
Or does she hear, 'neath some grave's guardian flower,
    Sad sighing of dead loves remembered not?

~~
Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887)
from Wind-voices, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Philip Bourke Marston biography

Keith Evans, Grey Skies, June 2011. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Spring of the Year / Allan Cunningham

The Spring of the Year

Gone were but the winter cold,
    And gone were but the snow,
I could sleep in the wild woods
    Where primroses blow.

Cold's the snow at my head,
    And cold at my feet;
And the finger of death's at my e'en,
    Closing them to sleep.

Let none tell my father
    Or my mother so dear,–
I'll meet them both in heaven
    At the spring of the year.

~~
Allan Cunningham (1784-1842)
from The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900, 1919 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Allan Cunningham biography

Gordon Griffiths, Spring Snow, 2013. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Death as the Teacher of Love-Lore / Frank T. Marzials

Death as the Teacher of Love-Lore

'Twas in mid autumn, and the woods were still.
    A brooding mist from out the marshlands lay
    Like age’s clammy hand upon the day,
Soddening it;— and the night rose dank and chill.
I watched the sere leaves falling, falling, till
    Old thoughts, old hopes, seemed fluttering too away,
    And then I sighed to think how life’s decay,
And change, and time’s mischances, Love might kill.
Sudden a shadowy horseman, at full speed
    Spurring a pale horse, passed me swiftly by,
And mocking shrieked, “Thy love is dead indeed,
    Haste to the burial!”— With a bitter cry
I swooned, and wake to wonder at my creed,
    Learning from Death that Love can never die.

~~
Frank T. Marzials (1840-1912)
from Death's Disguises, and other sonnets, 1889

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Frank T. Marzials biography

Sawrey Gilpin (1733-1807), Death on a Pale Horse. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

A July Fern-Leaf / Mortimer Collins

A July Fern-Leaf

Mors aurem vellens, "Vivite" ait, "Venio."

    I

 
White feet in the fairy fern –
    Quick wings in a chrysolite sky –
And an amethyst lamp in the west to burn,
When the cool dusk hours for which lovers yearn
    Pass in sweet silence by:
        Over summer seas
        Thou bringest these
                    Hither, July.

    II

Stern hours have the merciless Fates
    Plotted for all who die:
But looking down upon Richmond's aits,
Where the merles sing low to their amorous mates,
    Who cares to ask them why?
        We'll have wit, love, wine,
        Ere thy days divine
                    Wither, July.

    III

 
For the blossom of youth must fade,
    And the vigor of life must fly;
Yet to-day is ours with its odorous shade,
And the loving eyes which soon betrayed
    Dreams in the heart that lie.
        Swift life's stream flows,
        But alas! who knows
                    Whither, July.

~~
Mortimer Collins (1827-1876)
from The Inn of Strange Meetings, and other poems, 1871

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Mortimer Collins biography

Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), Green Summer, 1868. Wikimedia Commons.

On My First Son / Ben Jonson

On My First Son

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

~~
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
from Epigrams, 1616

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ben Jonson biography

"On My First Son" read by Robert Pinsky. Courtesy YouTube.

June / William Cullen Bryant

June

I gazed upon the glorious sky
    And the green mountains round;
And thought that when I came to lie
    Within the silent ground,
Twere pleasant, that in flowery June,
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
    And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton’s hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain turf should break.

A cell within the frozen mould,
    A coffin borne through sleet,
And icy clods above it rolled,
    While fierce the tempests beat —
Away!— I will not think of these —
Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
    Earth green beneath the feet,
And be the damp mould gently pressed
Into my narrow place of rest.

Bryant obelisk, Roslyn Cemetery,
 New York. Courtesy Find a Grave.

There through the long, long summer hours,
    The golden light should lie,
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
    Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale close beside my cell;
    The idle butterfly
Should rest him there, and there be heard
The housewife bee and humming-bird.

And what if cheerful shouts at noon
    Come, from the village sent,
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon
    With fairy laughter blent?
And what if, in the evening light,
Betrothèd lovers walk in sight
    Of my low monument?
I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

I know, I know I should not see
    The season’s glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,
    Nor its wild music flow;
But if, around my place of sleep,
The friends I love should come to weep,
    They might not haste to go.
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom,
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

These to their softened hearts should bear
    The thought of what has been,
And speak of one who cannot share
    The gladness of the scene;
Whose part, in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,
    Is — that his grave is green;
And deeply would their hearts rejoice
To hear again his living voice.

~~

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

from Poems, 1848

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Cullen Bryant biography

"June" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Ghizela Rowe- Topic.

December / Thomas Bailey Aldrich

December

Only the sea intoning,
Only the wainscot-mouse,
Only the wild wind moaning
Over the lonely house.

Darkest of all Decembers
Ever my life has known,
Sitting here by the embers,
Stunned and helpless, alone —

Dreaming of two graves lying
Out in the damp and chill:
One where the buzzard, flying,
Pauses at Malvern Hill;

The other—alas! the pillows
Of that uneasy bed
Rise and fall with the billows
Over our sailor's head.

Theirs the heroic story —
Died, by frigate and town!
Theirs the Calm and the Glory,
Theirs the Cross and the Crown.

Mine to linger and languish
Here by the wintry sea.
Ah, faint heart! in thy anguish,
What is there left to thee?

Only the sea intoning,
Only the wainscot-mouse,
Only the wild wind moaning
Over the lonely house.

~~
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)
from Poems, 1885

[Poem is in the public domain world-wide]

Thomas Bailey Aldrich biography

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907). Courtesy American Literature.

Come, come thou bleak December wind / Samuel Taylor Coleridge

John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Blow, Blow, 

Thou Winter Wind, 1892. Wikimedia Commons.

[Fragment 3]

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.

~~
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
from Complete Poetical Works,  1912

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge biography

"Come, come thou bleak December wind read by Richard Mitchley.

Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

November Rain / Ellen P. Allerton

November Rain

November rain! November rain!
Fitfully beating the window pane:
Creeping in pools across the street;
Clinging in slush to dainty feet;
Shrouding in black the sun at noon;
Wrapping a pall about the moon.

Out in the darkness, sobbing, sighing,
Yonder, where the dead are lying,
Over mounds with headstones gray,
And new ones made but yesterday —
Weeps the rain above the mould,
Weeps the night-rain, sad and cold.

The low wind wails—a voice of pain.
Fit to chime with the weeping rain.
Dirge-like, solemn, it sinks and swells,
Till I start and listen for tolling bells,
And let them toll — the summer fled,
Wild winds and rain bewail the dead.

And yet not dead. A prophesy
Over wintry wastes comes down to me,
Strong, exultant, floating down
Over frozen fields and forests brown,
Clear and sweet it peals and swells,
Like New Year chimes from midnight bells.

It tells of a heart with life aglow,
Throbbing under the shrouding snow,
Beating, beating with pulses warm,
While roars above it the gusty storm.
Asleep — not dead — your grief is vain,
Wild, wailing winds, November rain.

~~
Ellen P. Allerton (1835-1893)
from Annabel, and other poems, 1885

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ellen P. Allerton biography

"November Rain" read by Khurshida Jahan.

World Trade Center / Julia Vinograd

 

World Trade Center

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,

rocking back and forth in grief and rage.

I need to tear out my enemy’s throat

for the taste of his lifeblood

is better than strawberries.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Byzantium.

I am kneeling in the ruins of New York.

I am saying the names of my dead children

over and over, as if they were silver bullets

to shoot at God’s smile,

but I want to kill my enemy’s children

more than I want my own children back.

My face is twisted and strong.

People in uniforms want me to stand up

and get out of their way.

I ignore them.

The sky’s a pillar of smoke above me.

There’s a pillar of fire raging inside me.

I clench my shaking old hands into fists.

I need to squeeze my enemy’s throat

more than I need to hold my lover in the sweet and warm.

His body’s in front of me, squashed to a bloody pulp

with fallen metal.

Somebody takes our picture.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Jerusalem.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Ireland.

I am kneeling in the ruins of New York.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Stonehenge

that was a city once.

This was a world once

and I was human once but I’ve forgotten it.

I walk on bloody feet thru war.

Dying soldiers kneel to me

and I smile.

 ~~
Julia Vinograd (1943-2018)
from Voices: Compassion Education, 2011

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

Julia Vinograd biography

Michael Foran, Plumes of smoke billow from the World Trade Center

after the September 11th attacks, 2001 (detail). CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Beeny Cliff / Thomas Hardy

Beeny Cliff

March 1870 - March 1913

    I

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free –
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

    II

The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away
In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,
As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.

    III

A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,
And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,
And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.

    IV

– Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,
And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,
And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?

    V

What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
The woman now is – elsewhere – whom the ambling pony bore,
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.

~~
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
from Satires of Circumstance, 1914

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

Thomas Hardy biography