Sketch / F.S. Flint

Sketch

Gold on her head, and in her heart's heart, gold!
She seems to breathe a rhododendron glow
Of blossoming colour, Fra Angelico
Would love to picture — angels aureoled!

An early Summer in her smiling glance,
The virginal sap and sweetness of her June,
And calm serenity of a crescent moon,
Weaving a glamour where the young leaves dance.

She has too something of unclouded skies
Of day and night about her, blue and dark
In turn, and deep. You see it if you mark
The limpid laughing purity of her eyes.

~~
F.S. Flint (1885-1960)
from In the Net of the Stars, 1909

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

F.S. Flint biography

"Sketch" read by Nemo. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

(Poem begins at 29:55)

The Thrush / Edward Thomas

The Thrush

When Winter's ahead,
What can you read in November
That you read in April
When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see
Him alone at the end of the lane
Near the bare poplar's tip,
Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know
Than that, even as in April,
So in November,
Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore
Not to call November November,
And April April,
And Winter Winter — no more?

But I know the months all,
And their sweet names, April,
May and June and October,
As you call and call

I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;

And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that's ahead and behind.

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

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Thomas biography

"The Thrush" read by B W Thornton.

See also: "On a Thrush Singing in Autumn," by Lewis Morris

October / Edwin Arnold

from The Twelve Months

October

A bold brunette she is, radiant with mirth,
    Who comes a-tripping over corn-fields cropped;
    Fruits and blown roses, from her full arms dropped,
Carpet her feet along the gladdened earth;

Around her brow glitters a careless crown
    Of bronzed oak, and apple-leaves, and vine;
    And russet-nuts and country berries twine
About her gleaming shoulders and loose gown.

Like grapes at vintage, where the ripe wine glows,
    Glows so her sweet cheek, summer-touched but fair;
    And, like grape-tendrils, all her wealth of hair,
Gold on a ground of brown, nods as she goes:

Grapes too, a-spirt, her brimming fingers bear,
    A dainty winepress, pouring wet and warm
    The crimson river over wrist and arm,
And on her lips — adding no crimson there!

Ah! golden autumn hours — fly not so fast!
    Let the sweet Lady long with us delay;
    The sunset makes the sun so wished-for, — stay!
Of three fair sisters — loveliest and the last!

But after laughter ever follows grief,
    And Pleasure's sunshine brings its shadow Pain;
    Even now begins the dreary time again.
The first dull patter of the first dead leaf.

~~

Edwin Arnold (1832-1904), 1884

from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[November]

Edwin Arnold biography

ТиЈок, Zhiva - Old Slavic Goddess of Autumn, 2024. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

August / Helen Gray Cone

August

Loud pulses of the fields are heard to leap
Now all night long; all day the birds are mute.
The month hangs heavy, like a perfect fruit
That holds the opiate seeds of winter sleep.

~~
Helen Gray Cone (1859-1934)
from Through the Year with the Poets: August, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Helen Gray Cone biography

Peter Turner, Cornucopia, August 2016. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Winter Moonlight / Clark Ashton Smith

The Winter Moonlight

The silence of the silver night
Lies visibly upon the pines;
In marble flame the moon declines
Where spectral mountains dream in light.

And pale as with eternal sleep
The enchanted valleys, far and strange,
Extend for ever without change
Beneath the veiling splendors deep.

Carven of steel or fretted stone,
One stark and leafless autumn tree
With shadows made of ebony
Leans on the moon-ward field alone.

~~
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961)
from Ebony and Crystal, 1922

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

Logopop, Moonlight in the middle of nowhere 4, 2011. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Clark Ashton Smith biography

With trembling fingers did we weave / Alfred Tennyson

XXX

With trembling fingers did we weave
    The holly round the Chrismas hearth;
    A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas eve.

At our old pastimes in the hall
    We gambol'd, making vain pretence
    Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.

We paused: the winds were in the beech
    We heard them sweep the winter land
    And in a circle hand-in-hand
Sat silent, looking each at each.

Then echo-like our voices rang;
    We sung, tho' every eye was dim,
    A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang:

We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
    Upon us: surely rest is meet:
    "They rest," we said, "their sleep is sweet,"
And silence follow'd, and we wept.

Our voices took a higher range;
    Once more we sang: “They do not die
    Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change;

"Rapt from the fickle and the frail
    With gather'd power, yet the same,
    Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil."

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
    Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
    O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.

~~
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
from In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alfred Tennyson biography

The time draws near the birth of Christ / Alfred Tennyson

XXVIII

The time draws near the birth of Christ:
     The moon is hid; the night is still;
     The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round,
     From far and near, on mead and moor,
     Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind,
     That now dilate, and now decrease,
     Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

This year I slept and woke with pain,
     I almost wish'd no more to wake,
     And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:

But they my troubled spirit rule,
     For they controll'd me when a boy;
     They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule,

~~
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
from In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alfred Tennyson biography

Autumn Communion / Gladys Cromwell

Autumn Communion

This autumn afternoon
My fancy need invent
No untried sacrament.
Man can still commune
With Beauty as of old:
The tree, the wind’s lyre,
The whirling dust, the fire —
In these my faith is told.

Beauty warms us all;
When horizons crimson burn,
We hold heaven’s cup in turn.
The dry leaves gleaming fall,
Crumbs of mystical bread;
My dole of Beauty I break,
Love to my lips I take,
And fear is quieted.

The symbols of old are made new:
I watch the reeds and the rushes,
The spruce trees dip their brushes
In the mountain’s dusky blue;
The sky is deep like a pool;
A fragrance the wind brings over
Is warm like hidden clover,
Though the wind itself is cool.

Across the air, between
The stems and the grey things,
Sunlight a trellis flings.
In quietude I lean:
I hear the lifting zephyr
Soft and shy and wild;
And I feel earth gentle and mild
Like the eyes of a velvet heifer.

Love scatters and love disperses.
Lightly the orchards dance
In a lovely radiance.
Down sloping terraces
They toss their mellow fruits.
The rhythmic wind is sowing,
Softly the floods are flowing
Between the twisted roots.

What Beauty need I own
When the symbol satisfies?
I follow services
Of tree and cloud and stone.
Color floods the world;
I am swayed by sympathy;
Love is a litany
In leaf and cloud unfurled.

~~
Gladys Cromwell (1885-1919)
from Poems, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Gladys Cromwell biography

"Autumn Communion" read for Audiobook Passion.

Fall of Stars / George H. Dillon

Fall of Stars

The snow came down like stars tonight
Over the city silently.
The air, like a great glittering tree,
Bloomed noiselessly with light.

I thought, it is the snow I see
Like stars. And it was long ago
That ever I saw the stars like snow.

And I thought of a boy, a long time dead,
Who dreamed such beauty out of pain
That music moved within his brain
And the stars stormed in his head.

His ghost is like the wind, I said,
That cries into the crystal gloom,
And wanders where the white clouds blow.

And I shall hear his song, I know,
Wherever the boughs of silence bloom
With snow like stars or stars like snow.

~~
George H. Dillon (1906-1968)
from Poetry, August 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

George H. Dillon biography

"Fall of Stars" read for Unwanted Narrator.

To-night ungather'd let us leave / Alfred Tennyson

CIV

To-night ungather'd let us leave
     This laurel, let this holly stand:
     We live within the stranger's land,
And strangely falls our Christmas eve.

Our father's dust is left alone
     And silent under other snows:
     There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.

No more shall wayward grief abuse
     The genial hour with mask and mime;
     For change of place, like growth of time,
Has' broke the bond of dying use.

Let cares that petty shadows cast,
     By which our lives are chiefly proved,
     A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.

But let no footstep beat the floor,
     Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
     For who would keep an ancient form
Thro' which the spirit breathes no more?

Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
     Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown;
     No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east

Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
     Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
     Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.

~~
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
from In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Alfred Tennyson biography

Winter Solitude / Archibald Lampman

Winter Solitude

I saw the city's towers on a luminous pale-gray sky;
Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green,
With naught but frost and the coming of night between,
And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye.

I sat in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee
Where the thin wind stung my cheeks,
And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks,
Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea.

And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone,
As I sat reflecting there,
In a world so mystically fair,
So deathly silent  —  I so utterly alone.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from At the Long Sault, and other new poems, 1943

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Winter Solitude" film and reading by Finn Harvor.

A Summer's Night / Paul Laurence Dunbar

A Summer's Night

The night is dewy as a maiden's mouth,
The skies are bright as are a maiden's eyes,
Soft as a maiden's breath, the wind that flies
Up from the perfumed bosom of the South.

Like sentinels, the pines stand in the park;
And hither hastening like rakes that roam,
With lamps to light their wayward footsteps home,
The fire-flies come stagg'ring down the dark.

~~
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
from Lyrics of Lowly Life, 1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Paul Laurence Dunbar biography

"A Summer's Night" read by Quin.

O moon, large golden summer moon / Mathilde Blind

from Love in Exile:

XIII

O moon, large golden summer moon,
    Hanging between the linden trees,
    Which in the intermittent breeze
Beat with the rhythmic pulse of June!

O night-air, scented through and through
    With honey-coloured flower of lime,
    Sweet now as in that other time
When all my heart was sweet as you!

The sorcery of this breathing bloom
    Works like enchantment in my brain,
    Till, shuddering back to life again,
My dead self rises from its tomb.

And, lovely with the love of yore,
    Its white ghost haunts the moon-white ways;
    But, when it meets me face to face,
Flies trembling to the grave once more.

~~
Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)
from Songs and Sonnets, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Mathilde Blind biography

Green Boughs / Frank Pearce Sturm

Green Boughs

Dark boughs of trees are reawakening,
A ripple of shadowy green moves on the earth,
A light wind lifts the boughs, the wind of birth,
Blowing to bud the tremulous flames of Spring.

Music of youth, fill the green earth, the grey sea;
White plover, cry your low, sweet-throated cry;
And be you silent, voices of prophecy,–
I remember, too, when it was spring with me.

~~
Frank Pearce Sturm (1879-1942)
from An Hour of Reverie, 1905

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

Frank Pearce Sturm biography

Fate / Patrick MacGill

Fate 

The cloudwrack o'er the heaven flies,
     The wild wind whistles on the lake,
     The drooping branches in the brake
Mourn for the pale blue butterflies.

Where is the sheen of green and gold?
     The sullen Winter's beard is hoar,
     Where are the fruits the Autumn bore?
We know not, who are growing old.

We pulled the dainty flowers of spring,
     But we were happy being young –
     And now when Autumn's knell is rung
We wither 'neath the vampire wing.

~~

Patrick MacGill (1889-1963)

from Songs of a Navvy, 1911

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

Patrick MacGill biography

A Summer Day / H.C. Beeching

A Summer Day 

Green leaves panting for joy with the great wind rushing through;
  A burst of the sun from cloud and a sparkle on valley and hill,
  Gold on the corn, and red on the poppy, and on the rill
Silver, and over all white clouds afloat in the blue.

Swallows that dart, a lark unseen, innumerous song
  Chirruped and twittered, a lowing of cows in the meadow grass,
  Murmuring gnats, and bees that suck their honey and pass:
God is alive, and at work in the world:— we did it wrong.

Human eyes, and human hands, and a human face
  Darkly beheld before in a vision, not understood,
Do I at last begin to feel as I stand and gaze
  Why God waited for this, then called the world very good?

~~
H.C. Beeching (1859-1919)
from Love's Looking Glass, 1891

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

H.C. Beeching biography

June in the City / John Reed

June in the City

This rock-rimmed Northern land is ringed with bloom;
Each night the warm sky hovers soft and low
Above young strolling lovers — and I know
That on far beaches drives the sea-salt spume.

Oh for a strength of flowering to thrust
Green leaves up through this iron city street!
Brown thrushes in the twilight, and a sweet
Clean wind to sweep the dim stars free from dust!

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

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

John Reed biography

Especially when the October wind / Dylan Thomas

Especially when the October wind

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

~~
Dylan Thomas (1914-1954)
from Eighteen Poems, 1934

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

"Especially When the October Wind" read by Dylan Thomas. Courtesy gymnopedija.

Dylan Thomas biography

September Idyl / Arthur Symons

September Idyl: In the Hammock: Chameane. 

A sky of green and gold, tremulous, delicate,
Starred with pale blue, and bright with little voices; wind
Lifting the golden outer fringe, autumn has thinned;
A yellow leaf drops rustling, and another: wait,
The leaves begin to whisper, and the voices cease:
I hear the silence; but a voice flutters again,
A little, fluting voice, soft, piercing, as the rain;
I close my eyes, and all my body sways with peace.
Delicate, tremulous, seen under eyelids closed,
The sky of green and gold sways over me, and seems
To fill the languid soul with the desire of dreams;
But the sky fades, and only inner eyelids, rosed
With filtered sunlight falling, shadow as they pass
Not even dreams; until a trailing hand perceives,
Sudden, the earth again, in the crisp touch of leaves,
And the arresting slender fingers of the grass.

~~
Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
from Poems, 1902

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

Arthur Symons biography

Episode of a Night in May / Arthur Symons

from Scènes de la Vie de Bohème

I

Episode of a Night in May

J'aime la nuit, 1910  (detail).

Wikimedia Commons.

The coloured lanterns lit the trees, the grass,
The little tables underneath the trees,
And the rays dappled like a delicate breeze
          Each wine-illumined glass.

The pink light flickered, and a shadow ran
Along the ground as couples came and went;
The waltzing fiddles sounded from the tent,
          And Giroflée began.

They sauntered arm in arm, these two; the smiles
Grew chilly, as the best spring evenings do.
The words were warmer, but the words came few,
          And pauses fell at whiles.

But she yawned prettily. "Come then," said he.
He found a chair, Veuve Clicquot, some cigars.
They emptied glasses and admired the stars,
          The lanterns, night, the sea,

Nature, the newest opera, the dog
(So clever) who could shoulder arms and dance;
He mentioned Alphonse Daudet's last romance,
          Last Sunday's river-fog,

Love, Immortality; the talk ran down
To these mere lees: they wearied each of each,
And tortured ennui into hollow speech,
          And yawned, to hide a frown.

She jarred his nerves; he bored her — and so soon.
Both were polite, and neither cared to say
The word that mars a perfect night of May.
          They watched the waning moon.

~~
Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
from Days and Nights, 1889

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

Arthur Symons biography