Bath / Amy Lowell

from Spring Day

Bath

    The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

    The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

    Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.

    The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

~~
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
from Men, Women, and Ghosts, 1916

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

Amy Lowell biography

"Bath" read by Claude the Reciter.

Manitoba Childe Roland / Carl Sandburg

Manitoba Childe Roland

Last night a January wind was ripping at the shingles
    over our house and whistling a wolf song under the
    eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl
    the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark
    Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was
    beautiful to her and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and
    nothing happens — and he goes on and on — and it's
    all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on — and nothing happens — and he
    comes on a horse's skull, dry bones of a dead horse —
    and you know more than ever it's all lonesome and
    empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows — he
    fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the empty
    sky and the empty land--and blows one last wonder-
    cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks
    off its results willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick
    of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimetre
    projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts
    of Manitoba and Minnesota — in the sled derby run
    from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg —
    the lead dog is eaten by four team mates — and the
    man goes on and on — running while the other racers
    ride, running while the other racers sleep —

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle
    of travel hour after hour — fighting the dogs who
    dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep —
    pushing on — running and walking five hundred
    miles to the end of the race — almost a winner — one
    toe frozen, feet blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the North-
    west meet him in the finishing miles and yell cheers
    — I know why judges of the race call him a winner
    and give him a special prize even though he is a
    loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding
    heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles that
    one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland — and I told
    the six year old girl about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles
    and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes
    had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful
    to her and she could not understand.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Corhhuskers, 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Lomen Bros., Dogsled team, Nome, Alaska, 1910. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn Movement / Carl Sandburg

Autumn Movement

from Redhaw Winds

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Poetry, October 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Falltime / Carl Sandburg

Falltime

from Redhaw Winds

Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,

Canada-thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Why do you keep wishes shining on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities?

What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September — acres of birds spotting the air going south?

Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Poetry, October 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Decorating / Rik Roots

Decorating

I start with the lights. Good friends I’ve loved,
they start with the tree – sought and bought with bristles
and cones, balanced on a stand in the front room. Heirloom
baubles then mixed with glitter and gauzes, chocolates
and candlelights, each layer added as a conversation,
their story wrapping christmas fresh for the year. No,

I start with the lights, check each bulb in its socket
before I wind them round my plastic spruce, settle the plug,
switch the show on. I pause with each snowy card received:
a smile for the decoded signature; changed addresses noted
in my dieting address book, shedding its leaves. Then I tack
holly and mistletoe to my front door, a dozen
sticky berries to greet the unknown year.

~~
Rik Roots, December 2001
from PaleoRik, 2017 

This work by Rik Roots is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Based on a work at http://poems.rikweb.org.uk/.

Rik Roots biography

How true love is likened to summer / Thomas Malory

How true love is likened to summer

And thus it passed on from Candlemass until after Easter, that the month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in like wise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May, in something to constrain him to some manner of thing more in that month than in any other month, for divers causes. For then all herbs and trees renew a man and woman, and likewise lovers call again to their mind old gentleness and old service, and many kind deeds that were forgotten by negligence. For like as winter rasure doth alway erase and deface green summer, so fareth it by unstable love in man and woman. For in many persons there is no stability; for we may see all day, for a little blast of winter’s rasure, anon we shall deface and lay apart true love for little or nought, that cost much thing; this is no wisdom nor stability, but it is feebleness of nature and great disworship, whosomever useth this. Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in like wise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world, first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promised his faith unto; for there was never worshipful man or worshipful woman, but they loved one better than another; and worship in arms may never be foiled, but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady: and such love I call virtuous love.

~~
Thomas Malory (?1405-1471)
from Le Morte d'Arthur (edited by Edward Strachey), 1897

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Malory biography

For Christmas / Harriet Monroe

The child wants a teddy-bear and tracks and engines that light up and go; the youth wants a lettered sweater or a million dollars or a sweetheart; Mr. Mussolini wants the earth; the poet wants the moon; the saint wants God. Here we all are, wanting something — and usually the unattainable.

One may measure a man or a civilization by the quality of his-its-wants, and his-its-miracle-power of transmuting them into forms of approximate reality. In other words, one's measure is the imagination both static and militant, the dream that cannot stop with a vision, an idea, but must be on the way toward some kind of fulfilment, whether in action or the arts.

Nearly two thousand years ago a great creative spirit gave the world a vision of truth and righteousness which stimulated the want-instinct of western nations into more activity than any earlier teacher had been able to arouse. Through all these twenty centuries this want-instinct has persisted. Though often dulled almost to obliteration by narrow interpretations, by vicious violations, by passionate persecutions, it is still a shining goal far ahead of the race, something beautiful and unattainable which illuminates and perpetually attracts man's slow and halting footsteps. Its persistence is a proof of its vitality; the fire once lighted refuses to go out. We flatter ourselves that the race has advanced a little during these twenty centuries toward the elusive splendor, but probably another two thousand years will find our successors but little nearer to that ultimate infinite illumination.

Christmas, as we know it, is a symbol, a recognition, a flower on the altar, a bow in passing. It says a tiny yes to the dream, it sings a little song. In lighting our small red candles, in giving our paltry gifts, we pay a slight tribute, not only to the infinite spirit of love typified by the great hero whose birth we celebrate, but to all the lesser heroes who have been strongly inspired by the beauty of his life and the triumphant tragedy of his death. We turn from our familiar paths to pause a moment at a shrine heaped with noble treasures; a shrine where, to the end of time, the spirit of man will receive and carry away a richer treasure than anything he can bring.

~~
Harriet Monroe
from Poetry, December 1926

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

Harriet Monroe biography

Elinor Wylie (excerpt) / Harriet Monroe

Elinor Wylie

Elinor Wylie is dead. A flame which leapt high is gone out, and the world seems colder for the lack of it. The fire has gone out, but those whom it kindled and those whom it scorched know that it burned clear and strong, pure and ruthless, toward whatever open spaces of immortality may await the spirit that sings as it soars.

In a sense, the work of Elinor Wylie was complete, was finished. Though she died at forty-two, she had perfected her style and delivered her message. Death merely rounded the circle, gave her career a wholeness, a symmetry, as when a thoroughbred racer wins his trophy at the goal which was his starting-point a few moments before.

---
Harriet Monroe
Poetry, Vol. 33, No. 5 (Feb., 1929), pp. 266-272
Published by: Poetry Foundation
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20576895