September / Michael Field

September

But why is Nature at such heavy pause,
And the earth slowly ceasing to revolve?
Only the lapping tides abide their laws,
And very softly on the sand dissolve.
The fruit is gathered – not an apple drops:
In little mists above the garden bed
The petals of the last gold dahlia shed;
The spider central 'mid his wreathed dewdrops!
Oh still, oh quiet!– and no issue found;
No laying up to rest of callow things,
Or scale, or sheaf, or tissue of armed wings:
Open the tilth, open the fallow ground!
The fragrance of the air that has no home
Spreads vague and dissolute, nor cares to roam.

~~
Michael Field

from Wild Honey from Various Thyme, 1908

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography

    Txlixt Txlix T, Nature Reserve De Muy, September 2010. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

July / Michael Field

July

There is a month between the swath and sheaf
          When grass is gone
And corn still grassy,
                    When limes are massy
     With hanging leaf
And pollen-coloured blooms whereon
          Bees are voices we can hear,
      So hugely dumb
This silent month of the attaining year.
The white-faced roses slowly disappear
From field and hedgerow, and no more flowers come:
                    Earth lies in strain of powers
                    Too terrible for flowers:
And would we know
     Her burthen we must go
Forth from the vale, and, ere the sunstrokes slacken,
     Stand at a moorland's edge and gaze
     Across the hush and blaze
Of the clear-burning, verdant summer bracken;
          For in that silver flame
          Is writ July's own name —
          The ineffectual, numbed sweet
          Of passion at its heat.

~~
Michael Field
from Underneath the Bough, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography

February / Michael Field

February

Gay lucidity,
Not yet sunshine, in the air;
Tingling secrets hidden everywhere,
Each at watch for each;
Sap within the hillside beech,
Not a leaf to see.

~~
Michael Field
from Underneath the Bough, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography

A Summer Wind / Michael Field

A Summer Wind

O wind, thou hast thy kingdom in the trees,
        And all thy royalties
        Sweep through the land to-day.
              It is mid June,
And thou, with all thy instruments in tune,
              Thine orchestra
Of heaving fields and heavy swinging fir,
              Strikest a lay
              That doth rehearse
Her ancient freedom to the universe.
        All other sound in awe
              Repeats its law:
        The bird is mute; the sea
        Sucks up its waves; from rain
        The burthened clouds refrain,
To listen to thee in thy leafery,
              Thou unconfined,
Lavish, large, soothing, refluent summer wind.

~~

Michael Field

from Academy, September 18, 1866

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography

After Soufrière / Michael Field

   
After Soufrière

It is not grief or pain;
But like the even dropping of the rain,
That thou art gone.
It is not like a grave
To weep upon;
But like the rise and falling of a wave
When the vessel's gone.
It is like the sudden void
When the city is destroyed,
Where the sun shone;
There is neither grief nor pain
But the wide waste come again.

~~
Michael Field, 1902

from Wild Honey from Various Thyme, 1908

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography