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.

For Once, Then, Something / Robert Frost

For Once, Then, Something

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths — and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

~~
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
from New Hampshire, 1923

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

Robert Frost biography

"For Once, Then, Something" read by Patrick Donnelly. Courtesy The Frost Place.

From Piccadilly in August / John Freeman

Arthur Hacker (1858-1919), A Wet Night at 

Piccadilly Circus, 1910. Wikimedia Commons.

From Piccadilly in August

Now the trees rest: the moon hath taught them sleep.
Like drowsy wings of bats are all their leaves,
Clinging together. Girls at ease who fold
Fair hands upon white necks and thro' dusk fields
Walk all content,— of them the trees have taken
Their way of evening rest; the yellow moon
With her pale gold hath lit their dreams that lisp
On the wind's murmurous lips.
                                                          And low beyond
Burn those bright lamps beneath the moon more bright,
Lamps that but flash and sparkle and light not
The inward eye and musing thought, nor reach
Where, poplar-like, that tall-built campanile
Lifts to the neighbouring moon her head and feels
The pale gold like an ocean laving her.

~~
John Freeman (1880-1929)
from Fifty Poems, 1911

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

John Freeman biography

"From Piccadilly in August" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

Even in the bluest noonday of July / Robert Louis Stevenson

Ismael Valladolid Torres, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris July 2002.

CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

To Mrs. Will. H. Low

Even in the bluest noonday of July,
There could not run the smallest breath of wind
But all the quarter sounded like a wood;
And in the chequered silence and above
The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois,
Suburban ashes shivered into song.
A patter and a chatter and a chirp
And a long dying hiss — it was as though
Starched old brocaded dames through all the house
Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky
Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain.

Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks
Of the near autumn, how the smitten ash
Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long
In these inconstant latitudes delay,
O not too late from the unbeloved north
Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof
Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes
Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms,
Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.

~~
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
from Underwoods, 1891

[Poem is in the public domain]

Robert Louis Stevenson biography

"To Mrs. Will H. Low" read for Audiobook Passion.

Darkness / George Gordon, Lord Byron

Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires — and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings — the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire — but hour by hour
They fell and faded — and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash — and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless — they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought — and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails — men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress — he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects — saw, and shriek'd, and died —
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless —
A lump of death — a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge —
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them — She was the Universe.

~~
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
from The Prisoner of Chillon, and other poems, 1816

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Lord Byron biography

"Darkness" courtesy POPoetry.

The Manor Farm / Edward Thomas

The Manor Farm

The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;
Nor did I value that thin gilding beam
More than a pretty February thing
Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,
And church and yew-tree opposite, in age
Its equals and in size. The church and yew
And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness.
The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof,
With tiles duskily glowing, entertained
The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof
White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one.
Three cart-horses were looking over a gate
Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails
Against a fly, a solitary fly.

The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained
Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught
And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter —
Rather a season of bliss unchangeable
Awakened from farm and church where it had lain
Safe under tile and thatch for ages since
This England, Old already, was called Merry.

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Poems, 1917.

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Thomas biography

"The Manor Farm" read by Audiobook Passion.

The Second Coming / W.B. Yeats

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

~~

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

from Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1914

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

William Butler Yeats biography

"Slouching towards Bethlehem" sung by Joni Mitchell. Courtesy Joni Mitchell.

Autumn / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Paul VanDerWerf, Autumn Scene, October 2017 (detail). CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn

With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life’s newness, and earth’s garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.

    There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves; the purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings;
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.

    O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.

~~
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
from Voices of the Night, 1839

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow biography

"Autumn" read by Jack Gunski. Courtesy Quippers United.

The Winter Scene (I-II) / Bliss Carman

The Winter Scene

I

The rutted roads are all like iron; skies
Are keen and brilliant; only the oak-leaves cling
In the bare woods, or the hardy bitter-sweet;
Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on;
And all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice
That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick,
Or in the twilight cracks with running whoop.
Bring in the logs of oak and hickory,
And make an ample blaze on the wide hearth.
Now is the time, with winter o'er the world,
For books and friends and yellow candle-light,
And timeless lingering by the settling fire.
While all the shuddering stars are keen with cold.

"Winter Scenes Prelude & I: Shuddering Stars," composed by Donald Skirvin

II

Out from the silent portal of the hours,

When frosts are come and all the hosts put on.

Their burnished gear to march across the night

And o'er a darkened earth in splendor shine,

Slowly above the world Orion wheels

His glittering square, while on the shadowy hill

And throbbing like a sea-light through the dusk,

Great Sirius rises in his flashing blue.

Lord of the winter night, august and pure,

Returning year on year untouched by time,

To hearten faith with thine unfaltering fire,

There are no hurts that beauty cannot ease,

No ills that love cannot at last repair,

In the victorious progress of the soul.

~~

Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

from Sanctuary: Sunshine House sonnets, 1929

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

[The Winter Scene III-IV]

Bliss Carman biography

"Winter Scenes II: Unfaltering Fire," composed by Donald Skirvin

The Winter Scene (III-IV) / Bliss Carman

The Winter Scene

III

Russet and white and gray is the oak wood
In the great snow. Still from the North it comes,
Whispering, settling, sifting through the trees,
O'erloading branch and twig. The road is lost.
Clearing and meadow, stream and ice-bound pond
Are made once more a trackless wilderness
In the white hush where not a creature stirs;
And the pale sun is blotted from the sky.
In that strange twilight the lone traveller halts
To listen to the stealthy snowflakes fall.
And then far off toward the Stamford shore,
Where through the storm the coastwise liners go,
Faint and recurrent on the muffled air,
A foghorn booming through the smother – hark!

"Winter Scenes III: Strange Twilight," composed by Donald Skirvin

IV

When the day changed and the mad wind died down,
The powdery drifts that all day long had blown
Across the meadows and the open fields,
Or whirled like diamond dust in the bright sun,
Settled to rest, and for a tranquil hour
The lengthening bluish shadows on the snow
Stole down the orchard slope, and a rose light
Flooded the earth with beauty and with peace.
Then in the west behind the cedars black
The sinking sun stained red the winter dusk
With sullen flare upon the snowy ridge,--
As in a masterpiece by Hokusai,
Where on a background gray, with flaming breath
A scarlet dragon dies in dusky gold.

~~
Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
from Sanctuary: Sunshine House sonnets, 1929

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

[The Winter Scene I-II]

Bliss Carman biography

"Winter Scenes IV: "Dusky Gold", composed by Donald Skirvin

Early April in England / Percy MacKaye

Early April in England

Across the moist beam of the cloud-rimmed sun,
The larks run up in ecstasies of Spring,
And little feathered flutes of melody,
The yellow-ammers, pipe along the hedges.

The sheep, half basking in the golden blaze,
Half shivering in the gray, engulfing shadows,
Browse on the faint-green hills; the chilly wind
Ruffles the white geese on the rippled pond.

~~
Percy MacKaye (1875-1956)
from The Sistine Eve, and other poems, 1915

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

Photo: Skylark in flight, Midlands, England, April 2011. Courtesy Dreamstime

Percy MacKaye biography 

Birches / Robert Frost

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust —
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows —
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

~~
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
from Mountain Interval, 1916

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

Robert Frost biography

June Dreams, in January / Sidney Lanier (2)

[... continued from part 1]

Then he that wrote laid down his pen and sighed;
And straightway came old Scorn and Bitterness,
Like Hunnish kings out of the barbarous land,
And camped upon the transient Italy
That he had dreamed to blossom in his soul.
"I'll date this dream," he said; "so: `Given, these,
On this, the coldest night in all the year,
From this, the meanest garret in the world,
In this, the greatest city in the land,
To you, the richest folk this side of death,
By one, the hungriest poet under heaven,
– Writ while his candle sputtered in the gust,
And while his last, last ember died of cold,
And while the mortal ice i' the air made free
Of all his bones and bit and shrunk his heart,
And while soft Luxury made show to strike
Her gloved hands together and to smile
What time her weary feet unconsciously
Trode wheels that lifted Avarice to power,
– And while, moreover, – O thou God, thou God –
His worshipful sweet wife sat still, afar,
Within the village whence she sent him forth
Into the town to make his name and fame,
Waiting, all confident and proud and calm,
Till he should make for her his name and fame,
Waiting – O Christ, how keen this cuts! – large-eyed,
With Baby Charley till her husband make
For her and him a poet's name and fame.'
– Read me," he cried, and rose, and stamped his foot
Impatiently at Heaven, "read me this,"
(Putting th' inquiry full in the face of God)
"Why can we poets dream us beauty, so,
But cannot dream us bread? Why, now, can I
Make, aye, create this fervid throbbing June
Out of the chill, chill matter of my soul,
Yet cannot make a poorest penny-loaf
Out of this same chill matter, no, not one
For Mary though she starved upon my breast?"
And then he fell upon his couch, and sobbed,
And, late, just when his heart leaned o'er
The very edge of breaking, fain to fall,
God sent him sleep.
                                        There came his room-fellow,
Stout Dick, the painter, saw the written dream,
Read, scratched his curly pate, smiled, winked, fell on
The poem in big-hearted comic rage,
Quick folded, thrust in envelope, addressed
To him, the critic-god, that sitteth grim
And giant-grisly on the stone causeway
That leadeth to his magazine and fame.
Him, by due mail, the little Dream of June
Encountered growling, and at unawares
Stole in upon his poem-battered soul
So that he smiled, – then shook his head upon 't
– Then growled, then smiled again, till at the last,
As one that deadly sinned against his will,
He writ upon the margin of the Dream
A wondrous, wondrous word that in a day
Did turn the fleeting song to very bread,
– Whereat Dick Painter leapt, the poet wept,
And Mary slept with happy drops a-gleam
Upon long lashes of her serene eyes
From twentieth reading of her poet's news
Quick-sent, "O sweet my Sweet, to dream is power,
And I can dream thee bread and dream thee wine,
And I will dream thee robes and gems, dear Love,
To clothe thy holy loveliness withal,
And I will dream thee here to live by me,
Thee and my little man thou hold'st at breast,
– Come, Name, come, Fame, and kiss my Sweetheart's feet!"

~~
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881), 1869
from Poems, 1884

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Read complete poem

Sidney Lanier biography

A Midwinter Night's Eve / George J. Dance

A Midwinter Night's Eve

No trace of summer yet; the earth was dead.
The sun was slowly dying, too, and like
Some ancient monarch lay, a rotting hulk
Now wrapped in robes of pure magnificence –
Of purple, liquid gold, and bleeding red,
Reflecting off the scattered clouds above
Like flowers thrown upon a frozen grave.

A minute's silence for a fallen king.

The service over and the body lowered,
The very day now buried in the past,
With halting steps the widow turned away,
So painfully pulled on a cloak of black,
And hobbled off to seek oblivion
In dreams of reuniting with the sun.

~~

George J. Dance, 2007

from Logos, and other logoi, 2021

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

Andrew Crouthamel, Pennsylvania winter sunset, 2005. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

George J. Dance biography

Also read: At the Gates of Dawn

The Winter Evening / William Cowper (excerpt)

from The Task, Book IV:

     Oh Winter! ruler of the inverted year,
Thy scatter’d hair with sleet like ashes fill’d,
Thy breath congeal’d upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fring’d with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urg’d by storms along its slipp’ry way;
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem’st,
And dreaded as thou art! Thou hold’st the sun
A pris’ner in the yet undawning East,
Short’ning his journey between morn and noon,
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy West; but kindly still
Compensating his loss with added hours
Of social converse and instructive ease,
And gathering at short notice, in one group,
The family dispers’d, and fixing thought,
Not less dispers’d by day-light and its cares.
I crown thee King of intimate delights,
Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb’d retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know.

~~
William Cowper (1731-1800)
from The Task, and other poems, 1899

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Cowper biography

September / Carlos Wilcox

September

The sultry summer past, September comes,
Soft twilight of the slow-declining year.
All mildness, soothing loneliness, and peace;
The fading season ere the falling come,
More sober than the buxom, blooming May,
And therefore less the favourite of the world,
But dearest month of all to pensive minds,
Is now far spent; and the meridian sun,
Most sweetly smiling with attemper'd beams,
Sheds gently down a mild and grateful warmth.
Beneath its yellow lustre, groves and woods,
Checker'd by one night's frost with various hues,
While yet no wind has swept a leaf away,
Shine doubly rich. It were a sad delight
Down the smooth stream to glide, and see it tinged
Upon each brink with all the gorgeous hues,
The yellow, red or purple of the trees
That singly, or in tufts, or forests thick
Adorn the shores; to see, perhaps, the side
Of some high mount reflected far below,
With its bright colours, intermix'd with spots
Of darker green. Yes, it were sweetly sad
To wander in the open fields, and hear,
E'en at this hour, the noonday hardly past,
The lulling insects of the summer's night;
To hear, where lately buzzing swarms were heard,
A lonely bee long roving here and there
To find a single flower, but all in vain;
Then rising quick, and with a louder hum,
In widening circles round and round his head,
Straight by the listener flying clear away,
As if to bid the fields a last adieu;
To hear, within the woodland's sunny side
Late full of music, nothing save, perhaps,
The sound of nutshells, by the squirrel dropp'd
From some tall beech, fast falling through the leaves.

~~
Carlos Wilcox (1794-1827)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Carlos Wilcox biography

"September" sung by the American Poetry to Music AI Experiment Band.

Winter Memories / Henry David Thoreau

Winter Memories

Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,—
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the johnswort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb,
Its own memorial,— purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow:—
So by God's cheap economy made rich,
To go upon my winter's task again.

~~
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
from Poems of Nature, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry David Thoreau biography

"Winter Memories" sung by the American Poetry to Music AI Experiment Band.

An Old Man's Winter Night / Robert Frost

An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon,— such as she was,
So late-arising,— to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can't fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

~~
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
from Mountain Interval, 1920

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

Robert Frost biography

"An Old Man's Winter Night" read by Robert Frost. Courtesy Robert Frost - topic.

To Spring / Robert Story

To Spring

O what a bloom, a freshness — as of flowers
And verdure bathed in dew — comes o'er the heart,
Sweet Spring, when thou art named;
Or when thy softened breeze,

Pure from reviving nature, fans the cheek!
The languid spirit feels, through all its depths,
The genial warmth, and pours
Profuse its flowers of thought!

Who can thy charms enumerate? The dell,
Where the rathe primrose peeps; the living wood,
Where the green bud just bursts,
And the deep blackbird sings;

The plain, where smiles the daisy, where its gold
The gorgeous king-cup shows, and where the stream
Rolls in blue windings on;
The freshened mountain, gay

With springing heath and blooming gorse, o'er which
The plover screams; and over all, the sky
Blue, lofty fine, where laughs
The joyous sun, and where

Sails the light snowy cloud, or — if the shower
Thin-glancing falls — perchance the rainbow bends
Its scarcely visible arch,
Whence rings the sky-lark's song!

The eye looks round delighted, the heart beats
With rapture! — And do I experience now
That rapture, that delight?
Then, shall my song confine

Its praise to Earth's enchantments, nor ascend
In grateful adoration, God! to thee —
The source of all that's fair,
The bounteous source of Spring!

~~
Robert Story (1795-1860)
from The Magic Fountain, and other poems, 1819

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Robert Story biography

Winter Night / John Reed

Winter Night

High hangs the hollow, ringing shield of heaven,
Embossed with stars. The thin air wounds like steel,
Stark and resilient as a Spanish blade.
Sharp snaps the rigid lake's mysterious ice,
And the prim, starchy twigs of naked trees
Crackle metallic in an unfelt wind.
A light-poised Damoclean scimitar
The faintly-damascened pale moon. Benumbed
Shrinks the racked earth gripped in the hand of Cold.
O hark! Swift, anvil-ringing iron hoofs
Drum down the boreal interstellar space:
The Blue Knight rides, spurring his snorting stallion
Out of the dark side of the frozen moon —
Eyes crueller than a beryl-sheathed crevasse,
Breath like the chilly fog of polar seas,
Glaciers for armor on his breast and thighs,
A polished Alp for helmet, and for plume
The league-long Northern Lights behind him floating,
Wave on wave of prismatic blazoning,
Glorious up the sky!
                                         The Blue Knight rides
With his moon-shimmering, star-tipped lance at rest, —
Drives at the world — Crash ! and the brittle globe
Bursts like a crystal goblet, — shivering, falling, —
Shivers, splinters brustling, tinkling, jarring,
Jingling in fading dissonance down the void —
Jangling down the unplumbed void forever.  .  .  .

~~
John Reed (1887-1920),  1906
from Tamberlaine, and other verses, 1917

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

John Reed biography