Winter / Walter de la Mare [1916]

 

Winter

        Clouded with snow
        The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
        Alone sings now.

        The rayless sun,
        Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
        Unearthly white.

        Thick draws the dark,
        And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
        Floats the white moon.

~~

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

from The Listeners, and other poems, 1916

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

Walter de la Mere biography

"Winter" read for Waggle Woods.

Shireen and the Bee / David Atwood Wasson

Shireen and the Bee

SHIREEN went out 'mid the blooms of May,
And gladdened the lea with a rarer bloom:
On a breathing bank of flowers she lay,
And sweetened the breath of their perfume,
Gave balm to the breath of their perfume.

She sang from her heart; and the bird on the bough
Pouring paradise out of a quivering throat,
Grew silent to hear her; and ah! now, now,
No more he delights in his own glad note,
No longer he pipeth his own pure note.

On her bed of bloom she closed then her eyes,
And gave herself up to the peace of her breast;
And sleep stole down from a watch in the skies,
To win a new charm from her virgin rest,
To gather new balm from her angel rest.

A bee was flying the honey to sip
From maiden bosoms of roses Dew-blown;
But their bosoms he left, and flew to her lip
And would feed all summer on that alone,
Would fill up his hive from that alone.

But, ah! too deep the delight of the bee,
And soon he wanteth all will to fly:
" Oh! there s no summer but here," quoth he,
"And here, only here, will I live and die –
It were life upon such a couch to die,"

She woke, and him from his trance of bliss
Swept lightly away with ivory hand;
But now for the bee no honey but this!
No roses are sweet in all the land,
One sweet, and but one, in all the land.

Where violets cluster, languid his wing:
Where apple-trees blossom, vacant his eye;
He can find in his flight no winsome thing:
"My summer is over," he saith with a sigh;
" My summers are o'er, I can only die."

~~
David Atwood Wasson (1823-1887)
from Poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

David Atwood Wasson biography

In a September Night / F. Wyville Home

In a September Night

There the moon leans out and blesses
  All the dreamy hills below:
Here the willows wash their tresses
  Where the water-lilies blow
  In the stream that glideth slow.

High in heaven, in serried ranges,
  Cloud-wreaths float through pallid light,
Like a flock of swans that changes
  In the middle Autumn night
  North for South in ordered flight.      

What know ye, who hover yonder,
  More than I, of that veiled good
Whither all things tend, I wonder,
  That ye follow the wind’s mood
  In such patient quietude?

~~
F. Wyville Home (1851-1931)
from Lay Canticles, and other poems, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

F. Wyville Home biography

Hallowe'en in a Suburb / H.P. Lovecraft

Hallowe'en in a Suburb

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
     And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
     And the harpies of upper air,
     That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
     Never shone in the sunset’s gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
     Where the rivers of madness stream
     Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves
     In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
     And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
     For harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
     That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral pow’r
     Spreads sleep o’er the cosmic throne
     And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and plain
     That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
     Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw
     To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,
     The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
     Shall some day be with the rest,
     And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,
     And the leprous spires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
     Of horror and death are penn’d,
     For the hounds of Time to rend.

~~
H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)
from The National Amateur, March 1926

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

H.P. Lovecraft bibliography

"Hallowe'en in a Suburb" read by Nick Gisburne. Courtesy Nick Gisburne (Gisburne2000).

Last Week in October / Thomas Hardy

   
Last Week in October

The trees are undressing, and fling in many places —
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill —
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.

A spider's web has caught one while downcoming,
That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.

---
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
from Winter Words, 1928

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

"Last Week in October" read by Ghizela Rowe.

Thomas Hardy biography