Fern Hill / Dylan Thomas

Fern HIll

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
         Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
         Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
         Time let me play and be
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
         And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
         And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
         Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
         The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
         On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
         I ran my heedless ways,
    My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
         Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
         Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
         Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

~~
Dylan Thomas (1914-1954)
from Deaths and Entrances, 1946

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

Dylan Thomas biography 

"Fern Hill" read by Richard Burton. Courtesy Richard Burton--topic.

August / Edwin Arnold

from The Twelve Months

August

(From the German)

Gerda Arendt, Apple tree in field, Ehrenbach

(detail). Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Once, with a landlord wondrous fine,
    A weary guest, I tarried;
A golden pippin was his sign,
    Upon a green branch carried!

Mine host — he was an apple-tree
    With whom I took my leisure;
Fair fruit, and mellowed juicily,
    He gave me from his treasure.

There came to that same hostel gay
    Bright guests, in brave adorning;
A merry feast they made all day,
    And sang, and slept till morning.

I, too, to rest my body laid
    On bed of crimson clover;
The landlord with his own broad shade
    Carefully spread me over.

I rose; — I called to pay the score,
    But "No!" he grandly boweth;
Now, root and fruit, for evermore
    God bless him, while he groweth!

~~

Edwin Arnold (1832-1904), 1884

from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[September]

Edwin Arnold biography

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

Summer / David Morton

Summer
From what lost centuries that were sweet before,Comes this long wave of Summer, bursting whiteIn shivered apple-blossoms on the shoreThat is our homeland for a day and night!A wide, hushed spirit floats above the foam,A sweetness that was ancient flower and face,When wine-red poppies stained the walls of Rome,And daisies starred those summer fields of Thrace.

Something survives and haunts the leafy shade,Some fragrance that was petals, once, and lips,And whispered, brief avowals that they made,—Borne hither, now, in vague, invisible ships,Whose weightless cargoes, poured upon the air,Are flowers forgot, and faces that were fair.
~~
David Morton (1886-1957)
from Ships in Harbour, and other poems, 1921

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

David Morton biography

After Rain / Edward Thomas

After Rain

The rain of a night and a day and a night
Stops at the light
Of this pale choked day. The peering sun
Sees what has been done.
The road under the trees has a border new
Of purple hue
Inside the border of bright thin grass:
For all that has
Been left by November of leaves is torn
From hazel and thorn
And the greater trees. Throughout the copse
No dead leaf drops
On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern,
At the wind's return:
The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed
Are thinly spread
In the road, like little black fish, inlaid,
As if they played.
What hangs from the myriad branches down there
So hard and bare
Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see
On one crab-tree.
And on each twig of every tree in the dell
Uncountable
Crystals both dark and bright of the rain
That begins again.     

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Last Poems, 1918

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

Edward Thomas biography

"After Rain" read by The Wordman. Courtesy poemrecital.

Rich Days / W.H. Davies

Rich Days

Welcome to you rich Autumn days,
Ere comes the cold, leaf-picking wind;
When golden stocks are seen in fields,
All standing arm-in-arm entwined;
And gallons of sweet cider seen
On trees in apples red and green.

With mellow pears that cheat our teeth,
Which melt that tongues may suck them in;
With blue-black damsons, yellow plums,
Now sweet and soft from stone to skin;
And woodnuts rich, to make us go
Into the loneliest lanes we know.

~~
W.H. Davies (1871-1940)
from The Bird of Paradise, and other poems, 1914

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

W.H. Davies biography

The March Orchard / Ethelwyn Wetherald

The March Orchard

Unleaved, undrooping, still, they stand,
This stanch and patient pilgrim band;
October robbed them of their fruit,
November stripped them to the root,
The winter smote their helplessness
With furious ire and stormy stress,
And now they seem almost to stand
In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.

Yet seen through frosty window-panes,
When bared and bound in wintry chains,
Their lightsome spirits seemed to play
With February as with May.
The snow that turned the skies afrown
Enwrapt them in the softest down,
And rains that dulled the landscape o’er
But left them livelier than before.

But now this June-like day of March
With patient strength their branches arch,
Not as unmindful of the breeze
That makes midsummer melodies,
But knowing Spring a fickle maid,
And that rough days must dawn and fade
Before, all blossoming bright, they stand
In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from The House of the Trees, and other poems, 1895

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

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography

"The March Orchard" read by Roger Melin for LibriVox. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

(Poem begins at 17:29)

August / A.C. Swinburne

August

There were four apples on the bough,
Half gold half red, that one might know
The blood was ripe inside the core;
The colour of the leaves was more
Like stems of yellow corn that grow
Through all the gold June meadow’s floor.

The warm smell of the fruit was good
To feed on, and the split green wood,
With all its bearded lips and stains
Of mosses in the cloven veins,
Most pleasant, if one lay or stood
In sunshine or in happy rains.

There were four apples on the tree,
Red stained through gold, that all might see
The sun went warm from core to rind;
The green leaves made the summer blind
In that soft place they kept for me
With golden apples shut behind.

The leaves caught gold across the sun,
And where the bluest air begun,
Thirsted for song to help the heat;
As I to feel my lady’s feet
Draw close before the day were done;
Both lips grew dry with dreams of it.

In the mute August afternoon
They trembled to some undertune
Of music in the silver air;
Great pleasure was it to be there
Till green turned duskier and the moon
Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.

That August time it was delight
To watch the red moons wane to white
’Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;
A sense of heavy harmonies
Grew on the growth of patient night,
More sweet than shapen music is.

But some three hours before the moon
The air, still eager from the noon,
Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;
Against the stem I leant my head;
The colour soothed me like a tune,
Green leaves all round the gold and red.

I lay there till the warm smell grew
More sharp, when flecks of yellow dew
Between the round ripe leaves had blurred
The rind with stain and wet; I heard
A wind that blew and breathed and blew,
Too weak to alter its one word.

The wet leaves next the gentle fruit
Felt smoother, and the brown tree-root
Felt the mould warmer: I too felt
(As water feels the slow gold melt
Right through it when the day burns mute)
The peace of time wherein love dwelt.

There were four apples on the tree,
Gold stained on red that all might see
The sweet blood filled them to the core:
The colour of her hair is more
Like stems of fair faint gold, that be
Mown from the harvest’s middle floor.

~~
A.C. Swinburne (1837-1909)
from Poems and Ballads, 1866

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

A.C. Swinburne biography

"August" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

June Apples / Ethelwyn Wetherald

June Apples

Green apple branches full of green apples
     All around me unfurled,
Here where the shade and the sunlight dapples
     A grass-green, apple-green world.

Little green children stirred with the heaving
     Of the warm breast of the air,
When your old nurse, the wind, is grieving
     Comfortlessly you fare.

But now an old-time song she is crooning,
     Nestle your heads again,
While I dream on through the golden nooning,
     Or look for the first red stain

On some round cheek that the sunshine dapples,
     Near me where I lie curled
Under green trees athrong with green apples,
     In a grass-green, apple-green world.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from The House of the Trees, and other poems, 1895

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

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography

"June Apples" read by Roger Melin for LibriVox. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

(Poem begins at 51:16)

Beneath Apple Boughs / Lee Wilson Dodd

Beneath Apple Boughs

1

Cool green and paling blue,
     Leaves patterned on the sky,
Blossoms in pomp of May,
     Stirred as a breeze sifts through
Stealing their souls away.
     Now one by one they fly . . .
     Blossom or butterfly? . . .
Showering me as I lie,
A nympholept of the day.


2

The sloping orchard leads
     Down to the valley fields;
Far hills are faint in the haze
Of languid light. As I gaze
     The vision wavers and yields
To a flitting dream,
     And I seem to hear
A ripple of voices or else a stream
     That bubbles near.
Then I wake and study the weeds
     A foot from my nose;
     Then I doze
And the ripple of dream succeeds.


3

Bees are busy above me,
     Droning with sleepy toil ;
From blossom to blossom, from tree to tree
          They slant:
          At my ear a fidgety ant
     Tickles his way till I suddenly foil
     His explorations; the sun like oil,
Clear as amber, drips from the leaves.
A riotous bobolink deceives
With a glory of song, as though a dozen
Warbled together, cousin and cousin!


4

Cool green and paling blue,
     Blossoms in pomp of May,
Slow sunlight drizzling through
     Dreaming the noon away
I smile to the patterned sky;
Blossom — or butterfly? —
Showering me as I lie
With languid vision that yields to a dream
Of liquid voices and laughing stream.


5

To-day I have taken ease —
All the antient liberties —
With my brothers the apple-trees!
     I have felt their sap in my veins;
My thoughts like blossoms have been
Lucidly fair — without sin.
I go home with the evening breeze,
     But the calm of noon remains.

~~
Lee Wilson Dodd (1879-1933)
from A Modern Alchemist, and other poems, 1906

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

Lee Wilson Dodd biography

After Apple-Picking / Robert Frost

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

~~

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

from North of Boston, 1914

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

Robert Frost biography

Mid-May / Charles R. Murphy

Mid-May

Put aside your words, and there are left
Stones of the grey walls and apple-trees;
And in the flesh and mind, and in what seems
Birthing almost of an immortal soul,
Virginity and fortitude and hope —
Delicate as blossoms on the gnarled limbs
White, grey and green above the risen grass.

~~
Charles R. Murphy (1884-1936)
from Poetry, August 1921

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

Charles R. Murphy biography

The April Boughs / Theodosia Garrison

The April Boughs

It was not then her heart broke —
    That moment when she knew
That all her faith held holiest
    Was utterly untrue.

It was not then her heart broke —
    That night of prayer and tears
When first she dared the thought of life
    Through all the empty years.

But when beneath the April boughs
    She felt the blossoms stir,
The careless mirth of yesterday
    Came near and smiled at her.

Old singing lingered in the wind,
    Old joy came close again,
Oh, underneath the April boughs,
    I think her heart broke then.

~~

Theodosia Garrison (1874-1944)

From The Dreamers, and other poems, 1917

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

Theodosia Garrison biography

A Pastoral / Robert Hillyer

A Pastoral

The wise old apple tree in spring,
Though split and hollow, makes a crown
Of such fantastic blossoming
We cannot let them cut it down.
It bears no fruit, but honey bees
Prefer it to the other trees.

The orchard man chalks his mark
And says, “This empty shell must go.”
We nod and rub it off the bark
As soon as he goes down the row.
Each spring he looks bewildered. “Queer,
I thought I marked this thing last year.”

Ten orchard men have come and gone
Since first I saw my grandfather
Slyly erase it. I'm the one
To do it now. As I defer
The showy veteran's removal
My grandson nods his full approval.

Like mine, my fellow ancient's roots
Are deep in the last century
From which our memories send shoots
For all our grandchildren to see
How spring, inviting bloom and rhyme,
Defeats the orchard men of time.

~~
Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Robert Hillyer biography

September [1892] / Helen Hunt Jackson

September

The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

~~
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
from Poems, 1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Helen Hunt Jackson biography

"September" read by Ian King for LibriVox. Courtesy Poems Cafe.

Talking in Their Sleep / Edith M. Thomas

Talking in Their Sleep

      “You think I am dead,”
      The apple tree said,
“Because I have never a leaf to show —
      Because I stoop,
      And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow!
But I’m still alive in trunk and shoot;
      The buds of next May
      I fold away —
But I pity the withered grass at my root.”

      “You think I am dead,”
      The quick grass said,
“Because I have parted with stem and blade!
      But under the ground
      I am safe and sound
With the snow’s thick blanket over me laid.
I’m all alive, and ready to shoot,
      Should the spring of the year
      Come dancing here —
But I pity the flower without branch or root.”

      “You think I am dead,”
      A soft voice said,
“Because not a branch or root I own.
      I never have died,
      But close I hide
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.
Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
      You will see me again —
      I shall laugh at you then,
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers.”

~~
Edith M. Thomas (1854-1925)
from Selected Poems, 1926

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

Edith M. Thomas biography

"Talking in Their Sleep" sung by the American Poetry AI Experiment Band.

May Garden / John Drinkwater

       
May Garden

A shower of green gems on my apple tree
This first morning of May
Has fallen out of the night, to be
Herald of holiday --
Bright gems of green that, fallen there,
Seem fixed and glowing on the air.

Until a flutter of blackbird wings
Shakes and makes the boughs alive,
And the gems are now no frozen things,
But apple-green buds to thrive
On sap of my May garden, how well
The green September globes will tell.

Also my pear tree has its buds
But they are silver-yellow,
Like autumn meadows when the floods
Are silver under willow,
And here shall long and shapely pears
Be gathered while the autumn wears.

And there are sixty daffodils
Beneath my wall. . . .
And jealousy it is that kills
This world when all
The spring's behaviour here is spent
To make the world magnificent.

---
John Drinkwater (1882-1937)
from Tides, 1917

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

John Drinkwater biography

"May Garden" read by Bruce Kathuk. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

(Poem begins at 38:36)