To a Moth That Drinketh of the Ripe October / Emily Pfeiffer

To a Moth That Drinketh of the Ripe October

    I

A moth belated, sun and zephyrkist,
Trembling about a pale arbutus bell,
Probing to wildering depths its honey’d cell,—
A noonday thief, a downy sensualist!
Not vainly, sprite, thou drawest careless breath,
Strikest ambrosia from the cool-cupp’d flowers,
And flutterest through the soft, uncounted hours,
To drop at last in unawaited death;
’T is something to be glad! and those fine thrills,
Which move thee, to my lip have drawn the smile
Wherewith we look on joy. Drink! drown thine ills,
If ill have any part in thee; erewhile
May the pent force—thy bounded life, set free,
Fill larger sphere with equal ecstasy.


    II

With what fine organs art thou dower’d, frail elf!
Thy harp is pitch’d too high for dull annoy,
Thy life a love-feast, and a silent joy,
As mute and rapt as Passion’s silent self.
I turn from thee, and see the swallow sweep
Like a wing’d will, and the keen-scented hound
That snuffs with rapture at the tainted ground,—
All things that freely course, that swim or leap,—
Then, hearing glad voiced creatures men call dumb,
I feel my heart, oft sinking ’neath the weight
Of Nature’s sorrow, lighten at the sum
Of Nature’s joy; its half unfolded fate
Breathes hope — for all but those beneath the ban
Of the inquisitor and tyrant, man.

~~
Emily Pfeiffer (1827-1890)
from Sonnets and Songs, 1880

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Emily Pfeiffer biography

An August Midnight / Thomas Hardy

An August Midnight

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter— winged, horned, and spined —
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands...

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
— My guests besmear my new-penned line,
Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

~~
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), 1900
From Poems of the Past and Present, 1901

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

Thomas Hardy biography

Night for Adventures / Victor Starbuck

Night for Adventures

Sometimes when fragrant summer dusk comes in with scent of rose and musk
  And scatters from their sable husk the stars like yellow grain,
Oh then the ancient longing comes that lures me like a roll of drums
  To follow where the cricket strums his banjo in the lane.

And when the August moon comes up and like a shallow silver cup
  Pours out upon the fields and roads her amber-colored beams,
A leafy whisper mounts and calls from out the forest’s moss-grown halls
  To leave the city’s somber walls and take the road of dreams.

A call that bids me rise and strip, and naked all from toe to lip
  To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees,
And where the hairly spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin,
  And out to where the fields begin, like down upon the breeze.

Into a silver pool to plunge, and like a great trout wheel and lunge
  Among the lily bonnets and the stars reflected there;
With face upturned to lie afloat, with moonbeams rippling round my throat,    
  And from the slimy grasses plait a chaplet for my hair.

Then, leaping from my rustic bath, to take some winding meadow-path;
  Across the fields of aftermath to run with flying feet,
And feel the dewdrop-weighted grass that bends beneath me as I pass,
  Where solemn trees in shadowy mass beyond the highway meet.      

And, plunging deep within the woods, among the leaf-hung solitudes
  Where scarce one timid star intrudes into the breathless gloom,
Go leaping down some fern-hid way to scare the rabbits in their play,
  And see the owl, a phantom gray, drift by on silent plume.

To fling me down at length and rest upon some damp and mossy nest,      
  And hear the choir of surpliced frogs strike up a bubbling tune;
And watch, above the dreaming trees, Orion and the Hyades
  And all the stars, like golden bees around the lily-moon.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Then who can say if I have gone a-gipsying from dusk till dawn
  In company with fay and faun, where firefly-lanterns gleam?      
And have I danced on cobwebs thin to Master Locust’s mandolin —
  Or have I spent the night in bed, and was it all a dream?

~~
Victor Starbuck (1887-1935)
from Poetry, August 1916

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

Victor Starbuck 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

In a Garden / Radclyffe Hall

In a Garden

In the garden a thousand roses,
     A vine of jessamine flower,
Sweetpeas in coquettish poses,
     Sweetbrier with its fragrant dower.

There are hollyhocks tall and slender,
     And marigolds gay and fair,
And sunflowers in glowing splendour,
     Geraniums rich and rare;

And the wee, white, innocent daisy,
     Half hidden amid the lawn;
A bee grown drowsy and lazy
     On honey he's drunk since dawn

Is reposing with wings extended
     On some soft, passionate rose,
Aglow with a blush more splendid
     Than ever a fair cheek knows.

While a thrush, in the ivy swinging
     That clusters over the gate,
Athrob with the spring is singing,
     And ardently calls his mate.

For the spirit of all sweet odours
     The soul of a June unborn
Has hallowed my humble garden,
     And whispered to me since dawn.

And the flowers in a prayer of rapture,
     Bent low to that spell divine,
Are wafting their sweetest incense
     In clouds, at his sunlit shrine.

~~
Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943)
from 'Twixt Earth and Stars, 1906

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

Radclyffe Hall biography

"In a Garden" read for Unwanted Narrator.

Spring Day / Marion Strobel

Spring Day

I felt a fool
When you caught me smiling at myself
In the oval mirror;
But later in the day
A six-legged bug,      
Taking ten minutes to climb across
The muscles of my arm,
Convinced me of my greatness.

~~
Marion Strobel (1895-1967)
from Poetry, March 1920

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

Marion Strobel biography

"Spring Day" read by Newgate Novelist for LibriVox. Courtesy The Literary Shelf: Seven.

Return of Spring / Pierre de Ronsard

Return of Spring

God shield ye, heralds of the spring!
Ye faithful swallows, fleet of wing,
    Houps, cuckoos, nightingales,
Turtles, and every wilder bird,
That make your hundred chirpings heard    
    Through the green woods and dales.

God shield ye, Easter daisies all,
Fair roses, buds, and blossoms small,
    And he whom erst the gore
Of Ajax and Narciss did print,      
Ye wild thyme, anise, balm, and mint,
    I welcome ye once more!

God shield ye, bright embroidered train
Of butterflies, that on the plain
    Of each sweet herblet sip;      
And ye, new swarms of bees, that go
Where the pink flowers and yellow grow
    To kiss them with your lip!

A hundred thousand times I call
A hearty welcome on ye all!      
    This season how I love —
This merry din on every shore —
For winds and storms, whose sullen roar
    Forbade my steps to rove.

~~

Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585)

translated by Henry Francis Cary (1772-1844)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Pierre de Ronsard biography
Henry Francis Cary biography

Heat / Archibald Lampman

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
  The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
  Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half-way, or it may be
  Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
  With idly clacking wheels.

By his cart's side the wagoner
  Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur
  Of white dust puffing to his knees.
This wagon on the height above,
  From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
  In all the heat-held land.

Beyond me in the fields the sun
  Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
  Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
  Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
  The cool gloom of the bridge.

Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
  Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
  Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
  Into the pale depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
  His thin revolving tune.

In intervals of dreams I hear
  The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
  A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
  The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze;
  The hills are drenched in light.

And yet to me not this or that
  Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
  I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessed power
  Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour
  My thoughts grow keen and clear.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1887
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

On the Grasshopper and Cricket / John Keats

 
On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:
      When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
      And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's — he takes the lead
      In summer luxury, — he has never done
      With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
      On a lone winter evening, when the frost
            Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
      And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
            The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

---
John Keats (1795-1821)
from Poems, 1817

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Keats biography

"On the Grasshopper and Cricket", from Keats: The Musical, sung by Natalie Oak. Courtesy YouTube.

See also: "To the Grasshopper and the Cricket," by Leigh Hunt

A Meadow in Spring / Tom Bishop

A Meadow  in Spring

I love a meadow in spring.
The wildflowers press my eyes
Purple and yellow, the green
Is like a rare spice in my tea.

The sex and the wild flowers flow
With so many spring lilac stings.

The bees gather
Squaring a circle,
And pollen
Has clung to their feet.

The hive
Has a queen
Who is waiting
And dancing,
A pagan gig
Ready to eat.

The drones fly as high as she flies,
And they die in their droning;
To win
Is a minimal prize.

I love a meadow in spring.
The wildflowers press my eyes.

~~
Tom Bishop (1952-2007), 2006 

U.S.A.

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Tom Bishop biography