Long May You Live / George J. Dance

Long May You Live

Long may you live, long after I am gone,
And may you often fix your thoughts upon
Our memories; may the good times you and I
Enjoyed be points of light to journey by,
Like fireflies upon a twilit lawn.

May each day find you welcoming the dawn
And living life complete: each day to try,
To win, to celebrate with your head high.
      Long may you live.

May you walk in righteousness through Babylon,
True to yourself, not anybody's pawn;
And on that far-off day when you must die,
Once more may you remember me, and sigh,
And leave one wish for those who carry on:
     "Long may you live."

~~
George J. Dance, 2016
from Logos, and other logoi, 2021
 

[All rights reserved by the author - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography

Summer Schemes / Thomas Hardy

Summer Schemes

When friendly summer calls again,
      Calls again
Her little fifers to these hills,
We’ll go — we two — to that arched fane
Of leafage where they prime their bills
Before they start to flood the plain
With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.
   “—We’ll go,” I sing; but who shall say
   What may not chance before that day!

And we shall see the waters spring,
      Waters spring
From chinks the scrubby copses crown;
And we shall trace their oncreeping
To where the cascade tumbles down
And sends the bobbing growths aswing,
And ferns not quite but almost drown.
   “—We shall,” I say; but who may sing
   Of what another moon will bring!

~~

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

from Late Lyrics and Earlier, with many other verses, 1922

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

Thomas Hardy biography

One Day in May / Clinton Scollard

One Day in May

Do you recall, old friend, how we
Pulled up the Wye one day in May?
The bloom was on the hawthorn tree,
And many an upland meadow way
Showed plots of hyacinths as blue
As glints of sky the clouds let through.

We left gray Chepstow's walls behind,—
Its crumbling keep, its burst of chimes;
With us went wooingly the wind,
Repeating little liquid rhymes;
And with us, too, the tide's long sweep
From Severn and the outer deep.

Spring's choristers from either shore
Flung us their softly silvery hail;
Each time we raised or dipped the oar,
Lo, the sweet burden of a tale
As ancient as the hills, and keyed
To match our spirits' vernal need!

The heights slipped by; the lowlands swung
Like wingèd dreams athwart our ken;
Thatched farmsteads where the ivy clung
Swam in the westering light, and then,
Beyond lush tree and lichened stile,
Loomed Tintern's dim monastic pile.

We shipped the oars and stepped to land;
Sauntered the village streets, and clomb
Wide loops of path until we scanned
The valley,— water, wood and loam
Umber beneath the plowman's blade,
Or in faint gold and green arrayed.

Into a hill gap drooped the sun,
Flooding divinely, ere it went,
The abbey windows one by one
With an ethereal ravishment,—
Ambers and crimsons such as play
About the funeral pyre of day.

Then twilight's purples, and her peace,
And the calm lifting of the moon!
O Memory, may'st thou never cease
To grant to me this gracious boon,—
The vision of that bygone time
When May and youth were both at prime!

~~
Clinton Scollard (1860-1932)
from Voices and Visions, 1908 

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

Clinton Scollard biography

Mad as the Mist and Snow / W.B. Yeats

XVIII

Mad As The Mist And Snow

Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow.

Horace there by Homer stands,
Plato stands below,
And here is Tully's open page.
How many years ago
Were you and I unlettered lads
Mad as the mist and snow?

You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,
What makes me shudder so?
I shudder and I sigh to think
That even Cicero
And many-minded Homer were
Mad as the mist and snow.

~~
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
from Words for Music, Perhaps, 1932

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

William Butler Yeats biography

A Christmas-Cake / Helen Maria Williams

To Mrs K____, On Her Sending Me 
an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris

What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last! —
Mysterious cake, whose folds contain
Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;
That speaks of friends for ever fled,
And wakes the tears I love to shed.
Oft shall I breathe her cherished name
From whose fair hand the offering came:
For she recalls the artless smile
Of nymphs that deck my native isle;
Of beauty that we love to trace,
Allied with tender, modest grace;
Of those who, while abroad they roam,
Retain each charm that gladdens home,
And whose dear friendships can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!

~~
Helen Maria Williams (1762-1827)
from Poems on Various Subjects, 1823

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Helen Maria Williams biography

"To Mrs K—, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum Cake at Paris" 

read by Jean Aked. Courtesy jeanakedpoetry

A Sestina of Memories / J.E. Ball

A Sestina of Memories

When you were nine, and I was six years old,
Do you remember how we wandered forth,
Two small explorers, through the summer fields,
With apple turnovers provisioned well,
And trampled down the farmer's mowing grass,
In haste to pluck the little red-stemmed rose?

And how the farmer in his fury rose
With hot red face, as ogres wore of old,
And eyeing angrily his battered grass,
With wingèd words he drove the culprits forth,
And swore a whipping would be theirs as well
The next time they profaned his sacred fields?

Regretfully we left those sunny fields
(For there alone it grew, our longed-for rose),
And sate us down beside a little well
That bubbled up ’midst stonework grey and old,
And watched the slow soft runlets spouting forth,
To lose themselves amidst the spongy grass.

Long time we lay upon the kindly grass,
Until the cows from out their distant fields
In solemn, slow procession issued forth.
With stiff and lagging movements then we rose,
Our little bones aweary felt, and old
(For all the ground was damp beside the well).

Long weary weeks passed by ere we were well:
Long aching weeks; by then the farmer’s grass
Had turned to hay, and our offence was old.
Again we entered those forbidden fields,
But found no more our creamy-petalled rose,
Thorns, only thorns, the straggling hedge brought forth.

Sadly we turned, and sadly trotted forth,
Our flowers were gone, and all our hopes as well;
Though some, consoling, said, “Your little rose
Will bloom again: and, not to hurt the grass,
You might go skirting round the farmer’s fields –
His hand is mortal heavy, though he’s old.”

Still to the sunlit fields Hope speeds us forth:
Prone on the grass, we dream that all is well:
And so wax old, and never grasp our rose.

---
J.E. Ball
1904
from The Westminster Problems Book, 1908.

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]