The Three Kings / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Three Kings

Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.

The star was so beautiful, large and clear,
That all the other stars of the sky
Became a white mist in the atmosphere,
And by this they knew that the coming was near
Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy.

Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows,
Three caskets of gold with golden keys;
Their robes were of crimson silk with rows
Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,
Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.

And so the Three Kings rode into the West,
Through the dusk of the night, over hill and dell,
And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast,
And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest,
With the people they met at some wayside well.

“Of the child that is born,” said Baltasar,
“Good people, I pray you, tell us the news;
For we in the East have seen his star,
And have ridden fast, and have ridden far,
To find and worship the King of the Jews.”

And the people answered, “You ask in vain;
We know of no King but Herod the Great!”
They thought the Wise Men were men insane,
As they spurred their horses across the plain,
Like riders in haste, who cannot wait.

And when they came to Jerusalem,
Herod the Great, who had heard this thing,
Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them;
And said, “Go down unto Bethlehem,
And bring me tidings of this new king.”

So they rode away; and the star stood still,
The only one in the grey of morn;
Yes, it stopped—it stood still of its own free will,
Right over Bethlehem on the hill,
The city of David, where Christ was born.

And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard,
Through the silent street, till their horses turned
And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard;
But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred,
And only a light in the stable burned.

And cradled there in the scented hay,
In the air made sweet by the breath of kine,
The little child in the manger lay,
The child, that would be king one day
Of a kingdom not human, but divine.

His mother Mary of Nazareth
Sat watching beside his place of rest,
Watching the even flow of his breath,
For the joy of life and the terror of death
Were mingled together in her breast.

They laid their offerings at his feet:
The gold was their tribute to a King,
The frankincense, with its odor sweet,
Was for the Priest, the Paraclete,
The myrrh for the body’s burying.

And the mother wondered and bowed her head,
And sat as still as a statue of stone,
Her heart was troubled yet comforted,
Remembering what the Angel had said
Of an endless reign and of David’s throne.

Then the Kings rode out of the city gate,
With a clatter of hoofs in proud array;
But they went not back to Herod the Great,
For they knew his malice and feared his hate,
And returned to their homes by another way.

~~
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
from Keramos, and other poems, 1878

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow biography

"The Three Kings" read by Bob Rutan. Courtesy No Epilogue Productions.

February / Walter Thornbury

February

Acabashi, Copped Hall, Epping UK. 2019. 

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The time when skies are free from cloud,
Though still the robin whistles loud
    In the bare garden croft,
The catkin, on the hazel tree,
Mistakes for summer flower the bee,
    And round it hovers oft.

Winter's last sigh, from frozen north,
Withers the flower that ventures forth;
    And there is wanting still
The unseen warmth, the mellow note
Of the wild bird with dappled coat,
    Though faster flows the rill.

When, from his winter home, the snake
Creeps stealthy through the withered brake,
    And thoughtless of the past,
The young leaves open overhead,
Though still their fathers, sere and dead,
    Are hurried by the blast.

~~ 

Walter Thornbury (1826-1876)
from Lays and Legends; or, Ballads of the New World, 1851

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Walter Thornbury biography

Winter / Walter de la Mare [1916]

 

Winter

        Clouded with snow
        The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
        Alone sings now.

        The rayless sun,
        Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
        Unearthly white.

        Thick draws the dark,
        And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
        Floats the white moon.

~~

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

from The Listeners, and other poems, 1916

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

Walter de la Mere biography

"Winter" read for Waggle Woods.

Winter Song / Wilfred Owen

Winter Song

The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.

From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam again with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

~~
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

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

Wilfred Owen biography

"Winter Song" read by The Talkative Crow.

Shireen and the Bee / David Atwood Wasson

Shireen and the Bee

SHIREEN went out 'mid the blooms of May,
And gladdened the lea with a rarer bloom:
On a breathing bank of flowers she lay,
And sweetened the breath of their perfume,
Gave balm to the breath of their perfume.

She sang from her heart; and the bird on the bough
Pouring paradise out of a quivering throat,
Grew silent to hear her; and ah! now, now,
No more he delights in his own glad note,
No longer he pipeth his own pure note.

On her bed of bloom she closed then her eyes,
And gave herself up to the peace of her breast;
And sleep stole down from a watch in the skies,
To win a new charm from her virgin rest,
To gather new balm from her angel rest.

A bee was flying the honey to sip
From maiden bosoms of roses Dew-blown;
But their bosoms he left, and flew to her lip
And would feed all summer on that alone,
Would fill up his hive from that alone.

But, ah! too deep the delight of the bee,
And soon he wanteth all will to fly:
" Oh! there s no summer but here," quoth he,
"And here, only here, will I live and die –
It were life upon such a couch to die,"

She woke, and him from his trance of bliss
Swept lightly away with ivory hand;
But now for the bee no honey but this!
No roses are sweet in all the land,
One sweet, and but one, in all the land.

Where violets cluster, languid his wing:
Where apple-trees blossom, vacant his eye;
He can find in his flight no winsome thing:
"My summer is over," he saith with a sigh;
" My summers are o'er, I can only die."

~~
David Atwood Wasson (1823-1887)
from Poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

David Atwood Wasson biography

But One / Ella Wheeler Wilcox

But One

The year has but one June, dear friend,
     The year has but one June;
And when that perfect month doth end,
The robin's song, though loud, though long,
     Seems never quite in tune.

The rose, though still its blushing face
     By bee and bird is seen,
May yet have lost that subtle grace —
That nameless spell the winds know well —
     Which makes its gardens queen.

Life's perfect June, love's red, red rose,
     Have burned and bloomed for me.
Though still youth's summer sunlight glows;
Though thou art kind, dear friend, I find
     I have no heart for thee.

~~
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
from Poems of Passion, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ella Wheeler Wilcox biography

One Spring / Eda Lou Walton

from Hill Songs:

One Spring

One spring I lost completely,
Giving it to you.
Only myself,
Who died,
Knew.      

One spring I lost completely.
Now each spring is two —
The wild sweet spring
I lost,
And the new.

~~
Eda Lou Walton (1894-1961)
from Poetry, May 1920

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

Eda Lou Walton biography

Photo by Kristýna Matlachová. Courtesy Pixabay, 2020. 

Avril, la Douce Esperance / Thomas Ashe

Avril, la Douce Esperance

Come, spring, and bring the flowers again,
And plant the primrose by the brook:
Let love not languish at a look;
For she may grow more gentle then,
When springtime brings the flowers again.

Come, April, spreading kinder skies,
And make the leaves with sunshine laugh:
Perchance my love will learn to have
A softer tremor in her eyes,
When April comes with kinder skies.

Come, June, bring splendour of the rose;
Come, bring delight of tint and scent:
My darling will perhaps relent
And love me then, as once, - who knows?
When June brings splendour of the rose.

~~
Thomas Ashe (1836-1889)
from Poems, 1891

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Ashe biography

"Avril la Douce Esperance" reading, explanation, analysis. Courtesy iswearenglish.

A Winter's Tale / Dylan Thomas

A Winter's Tale

It is a winter's tale
That the snow blind twilight ferries over the lakes
And floating fields from the farm in the cup of the vales,
Gliding windless through the hand folded flakes,
The pale breath of cattle at the stealthy sail,

And the stars falling cold,
And the smell of hay in the snow, and the far owl
Warning among the folds, and the frozen hold
Flocked with the sheep white smoke of the farm house cowl
In the river wended vales where the tale was told.

Once when the world turned old
On a star of faith pure as the drifting bread,
As the food and flames of the snow, a man unrolled
The scrolls of fire that burned in his heart and head,
Torn and alone in a farm house in a fold

Of fields. And burning then
In his firelit island ringed by the winged snow
And the dung hills white as wool and the hen
Roosts sleeping chill till the flame of the cock crow
Combs through the mantled yards and the morning men

Stumble out with their spades,
The cattle stirring, the mousing cat stepping shy,
The puffed birds hopping and hunting, the milkmaids
Gentle in their clogs over the fallen sky,
And all the woken farm at its white trades,

He knelt, he wept, he prayed,
By the spit and the black pot in the log bright light
And the cup and the cut bread in the dancing shade,
In the muffled house, in the quick of night,
At the point of love, forsaken and afraid.

He knelt on the cold stones,
He wept form the crest of grief, he prayed to the veiled sky
May his hunger go howling on bare white bones
Past the statues of the stables and the sky roofed sties
And the duck pond glass and the blinding byres alone

Into the home of prayers
And fires where he should prowl down the cloud
Of his snow blind love and rush in the white lairs.
His naked need struck him howling and bowed
Though no sound flowed down the hand folded air

But only the wind strung
Hunger of birds in the fields of the bread of water, tossed
In high corn and the harvest melting on their tongues.
And his nameless need bound him burning and lost
When cold as snow he should run the wended vales among

The rivers mouthed in night,
And drown in the drifts of his need, and lie curled caught
In the always desiring centre of the white
Inhuman cradle and the bride bed forever sought
By the believer lost and the hurled outcast of light.

Deliver him, he cried,
By losing him all in love, and cast his need
Alone and naked in the engulfing bride,
Never to flourish in the fields of the white seed
Or flower under the time dying flesh astride.

Listen. The minstrels sing
In the departed villages. The nightingale,
Dust in the buried wood, flies on the grains of her wings
And spells on the winds of the dead his winter's tale.
The voice of the dust of water from the withered spring

Is telling. The wizened
Stream with bells and baying water bounds. The dew rings
On the gristed leaves and the long gone glistening
Parish of snow. The carved mouths in the rock are wind swept strings.
Time sings through the intricately dead snow drop. Listen.

It was a hand or sound
In the long ago land that glided the dark door wide
And there outside on the bread of the ground
A she bird rose and rayed like a burning bride.
A she bird dawned, and her breast with snow and scarlet downed.

Look. And the dancers move
On the departed, snow bushed green, wanton in moon light
As a dust of pigeons. Exulting, the grave hooved
Horses, centaur dead, turn and tread the drenched white
Paddocks in the farms of birds. The dead oak walks for love.

The carved limbs in the rock
Leap, as to trumpets. Calligraphy of the old
Leaves is dancing. Lines of age on the stones weave in a flock.
And the harp shaped voice of the water's dust plucks in a fold
Of fields. For love, the long ago she bird rises. Look.

And the wild wings were raised
Above her folded head, and the soft feathered voice
Was flying through the house as though the she bird praised
And all the elements of the slow fall rejoiced
That a man knelt alone in the cup of the vales,

In the mantle and calm,
By the spit and the black pot in the log bright light.
And the sky of birds in the plumed voice charmed
Him up and he ran like a wind after the kindling flight
Past the blind barns and byres of the windless farm.

In the poles of the year
When black birds died like priests in the cloaked hedge row
And over the cloth of counties the far hills rode near,
Under the one leaved trees ran a scarecrow of snow
And fast through the drifts of the thickets antlered like deer,

Rags and prayers down the knee-
Deep hillocks and loud on the numbed lakes,
All night lost and long wading in the wake of the she-
Bird through the times and lands and tribes of the slow flakes.
Listen and look where she sails the goose plucked sea,

The sky, the bird, the bride,
The cloud, the need, the planted stars, the joy beyond
The fields of seed and the time dying flesh astride,
The heavens, the heaven, the grave, the burning font.
In the far ago land the door of his death glided wide,

And the bird descended.
On a broad white hill over the cupped farm
And the lakes and floating fields and the river wended
Vales where he prayed to come to the last harm
And the home of prayers and fires, the tale ended.

The dancing perishes
On the white, no longer growing green, and, minstrel dead,
The singing breaks in the snow shoed villages of wishes
That once cut the figures of birds on the deep bread
And over the glazed lakes skated the shapes of fishes

Flying. The rite is shorn
Of nightingale and centaur dead horse. The springs wither
Back. Lines of age sleep on the stones till trumpeting dawn.
Exultation lies down. Time buries the spring weather
That belled and bounded with the fossil and the dew reborn.

For the bird lay bedded
In a choir of wings, as though she slept or died,
And the wings glided wide and he was hymned and wedded,
And through the thighs of the engulfing bride,
The woman breasted and the heaven headed

Bird, he was brought low,
Burning in the bride bed of love, in the whirl-
Pool at the wanting centre, in the folds
Of paradise, in the spun bud of the world.
And she rose with him flowering in her melting snow.

~~
Dylan Thomas (1914-1954)
from Deaths and Entrances, 1946

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Dylan Thomas biography

Hallowe'en / Coningsby Dawson

Hallowe'en

Hark to the patter of the rain,
Voices of dead things come again:
Feet that rustle the lush wet grass,
Lips that mutter, "Alas! Alas!"
And shadows that grope o'er my window-pane.

Poor outcast souls, you saw my light
And thought that I, on such a night,
Would pity take and bid you in
To warm your hands, so palely thin,
Before my fire which blazeth bright.

You come from hells of ice-cold clay
So pent that, striving every way.
You may not stir the coffin-lid;
And well you know that, if you did.
Darkness would come and not the day.

Darkness! With you 'tis ever dark;
No joy of skyward-mounting lark
Or blue of swallow on the wing
Can penetrate and comfort bring
You, where you lie all cramp'd and stark.

Deep sunk beneath the secret mould,
You hear the worm his length unfold
And slime across your frail roof-plank,
And tap, and vanish, like the rank
Foul memory of a sin untold.

And this your penance in the tomb:
To weave upon the mind's swift loom
White robes, to garb remorsefully
A Better Life — which may not be
Or, when it comes, may seal your doom.

Thus, side by side, through all the year,
Yet just apart, you wake and hear,
As men on land the ocean's strum,
Your Dead World's hushed delirium
Which, sounding distant, yet is near.

So near that, could he lean aside,
The bridegroom well might touch his bride
And reach her flesh, which once was fair,
And, slow across the pale lips where
He kissed her, feel his fingers glide.

So distant, that he can but weep
Whene'er she moans his name in sleep:
A cold-grown star, with light all spent,
She gropes the abyssmal firmament.
He hears her surging in the Deep.

Ever throughout the year 'tis thus
Till drones the dream-toned Angelus
Of Hallowe'en; then, underground,
Unto dead ears its voice doth sound
Like Christ's voice, crying, "Lazarus."

Palsied with haste the dead men rise
Groaning, because their unused eyes
Can scarce endure Earth's blackest night;
It wounds them as 'twere furious light
And stars were flame-clouds in the skies.

What tenderness and sad amaze
Must grieve lost spirits when they gaze
Beneath a withered moon, and view
The ancient happiness they knew —
The live, sweet world and all its ways!

Ho, Deadmen! for a night you're free
Till Dawn leads back Captivity,
To make your respite seem more dear
Mutter throughout your joy this fear:

"Who knows, within the coming year,
That God, our gaoler, may not die;
Then, who'd remember where we lie?
Who then will come to set us free?
Through all the ages this may be
Our final night of liberty."

Aye, hoard your moments miserly.

*       *       *

And yet . . . and yet, it is His rain
That drives against my window-pane.
Oh, surely all Earth's dead have rest
And stretch at peace in God's own breast,
And never can retum again!

And yet . . .

~~
Coningsby Dawson (1883-1959)
from A Vision of Florence, and other poems, 1916

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

Coningsby Dawson biography

By the Sea / Christina Rossetti

By the Sea

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

Sheer miracles of loveliness
Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed:
Anemones, salt, passionless,
Blow flower-like; just enough alive
To blow and multiply and thrive.

Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike,
Encrusted live things argus-eyed,
All fair alike, yet all unlike,
Are born without a pang, and die
Without a pang, and so pass by.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from Poems, 1890

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Christina Rossetti biography

"By the Sea." Courtesy The Verse Place.

The Wintry Day / Perdita

The Wintry Day

Is it in mansions rich and gay,
On downy beds, or couches warm,
That Nature owns the wintry day,
And shrinks to hear the howling storm?
     Ah! No!

'Tis on the bleak and barren heath,
Where Misery feels the ice of death,
As to the dark and freezing grave
Her children, not a friend to save,
     Unheeded go!

Is it in chambers silken drest,
At tables which profusions heap,
Is it on pillows soft to rest,
In dreams of long and balmy sleep?
     Ah! No!

'Tis in the rushy hut obscure,
Where Poverty's low sons endure,
And, scarcely daring to repine,
On a straw pallet, mute, recline,
     O'erwhelm'd with wo!

Is it to flaunt in warm attire,
To laugh, to feast, and dance, and sing;
To crowd around the blazing fire,
And make the roof with revels ring?
     Ah! No!

'Tis on the prison's flinty floor,
'Tis where the deafening whirlwinds roar;
'Tis when the sea-boy, on the mast,
Hears the wave bounding to the blast,
     And looks below!

'Tis in a cheerless naked room,
Where Misery's victims wait their doom,
Where a fond mother famish'd dies,
While forth a frantic father flies,
     Man's desperate foe!

Is it where gamesters thronging round,
Their shining heaps of wealth display?
Where fashion's giddy tribes are found,
Sporting their senseless hours away?
     Ah! No!

'Tis in the silent spot obscure,
Where, forced all sorrows to endure,
Pale Genius learns — oh! lesson sad!
To court the vain, and on the bad
     False praise bestow!

Where the neglected hero sighs,
Where Hope, exhausted, silent dies,
Where Virtue starves, by Pride oppress'd,
'Till every stream that warms the breast
     Forbears to flow!

~~
Perdita (Mary Robinson) (1758-1800)
from Poetical Works, 1824

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Perdita biography

Demeter in November / Mary Josephine Benson

Demeter in November

Her fingers pluck at the window-ledge —
               Demeter’s, come like a graveless ghost —
They pry and pluck like a rifting wedge
And she calls with the voice of the wind in sedge,
               “Persephone — lost — lost!”

The Mother of Earth grew crazed o’ernight —
               Demeter roams November-tossed —
And her hair, erst twined with wheat-ears bright
And poppies, is rent as she seeks in fright
               Persephone, her lost.

The flowers of all the earth are dead,
               Transfixed and grey and rimed with frost,
And its heavy corn is harvested —
Demeter shivers and shrieks in dread,
               “Persephone is lost!”

Has the scythe then circled thy fairest child,
               Demeter, and is thy questing crost,
That thou go’st with mien so changed and wild?
Is thy daughter by Death or Life beguiled,
               Persephone, thy lost?

In at each curtain she peers and raves,
               Now here must pause, now hence must post,
Then speeds to the ocean to scan the waves,
Or hastes to her furrows that gloom like graves —
               Persephone is lost.

Athwart the rain and the riven cloud
               Demeter, gone like a driven ghost,
At window of cot or castle proud
Is wailing low and is calling loud —
               “Persephone — lost — lost!”

~~
Mary Josephine Benson (1887-1965)
from My Pocket Beryl, 1921

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

Mary Josephine Benson biography

The Road Not Taken / Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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

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

Robert Frost biography

"The Road Not Taken" read by Robert Frost. Courtesy EML Publishing.

Autumnal / Ernest Dowson

Autumnal

Pale amber sunlight falls across
     The reddening October trees,
     That hardly sway before a breeze
As soft as summer: summer's loss
     Seems little, dear! on days like these!

Let misty autumn be our part!
     The twilight of the year is sweet:
     Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
     Eludes a little time's deceit.

Are we not better and at home
     In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
     No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
     A little while, then, let us dream.

Beyond the pearled horizons lie
     Winter and night: awaiting these
     We garner this poor hour of ease,
Until love turn from us and die
     Beneath the drear November trees.

~~
Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)
from The Poems of Ernest Dowson, 1900

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ernest Dowson biography

In a September Night / F. Wyville Home

In a September Night

There the moon leans out and blesses
  All the dreamy hills below:
Here the willows wash their tresses
  Where the water-lilies blow
  In the stream that glideth slow.

High in heaven, in serried ranges,
  Cloud-wreaths float through pallid light,
Like a flock of swans that changes
  In the middle Autumn night
  North for South in ordered flight.      

What know ye, who hover yonder,
  More than I, of that veiled good
Whither all things tend, I wonder,
  That ye follow the wind’s mood
  In such patient quietude?

~~
F. Wyville Home (1851-1931)
from Lay Canticles, and other poems, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

F. Wyville Home biography

Summer Days / W.M.W. Call

Summer Days

In summer, when the days were long,
We walk’d, two friends, in field and wood;
Our heart was light, our step was strong,
And life lay round us, fair as good,
In summer, when the days were long.

We stray’d from morn till evening came,
We gather’d flowers, and wove us crowns;
We walk’d mid poppies red as flame,
Or sat upon the yellow downs,
And always wish’d our life the same.

In summer, when the days were long,
We leap’d the hedgerow, cross’d the brook;
And still her voice flow’d forth in song,
Or else she read some graceful book,
In summer, when the days were long.

And then we sat beneath the trees,
With shadows lessening in the noon;
And in the sunlight and the breeze
We revell’d, many a glorious June,
While larks were singing o’er the leas.

In summer, when the days were long,
We pluck’d wild strawberries, ripe and red,
Or feasted, with no grace but song,
On golden nectar, snow-white bread,
In summer, when the days were long.

We lov’d, and yet we knew it not,
For loving seem’d like breathing then;
We found a heaven in every spot;
Saw angels, too, in all good men,
And dream’d of gods in grove and grot.

In summer, when the days are long,
Alone I wander, muse alone;
I see her not, but that old song
Under the fragrant wind is blown,
In summer, when the days are long.

Alone I wander in the wood,
But one fair spirit hears my sighs;
And half I see the crimson hood,
The radiant hair, the calm glad eyes,
That charm’d me in life’s summer mood.

In summer, when the days are long,
I love her as I lov’d of old;
My heart is light, my step is strong,
For love brings back those hours of gold,
In summer, when the days are long.

 ~~
W.M.W. Call (1817-1890) 
from A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895, 1895 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

W.M.W. Call biography

Hallowe'en in a Suburb / H.P. Lovecraft

Hallowe'en in a Suburb

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
     And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
     And the harpies of upper air,
     That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
     Never shone in the sunset’s gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
     Where the rivers of madness stream
     Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind weaves thro’ the rows of sheaves
     In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
     And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
     For harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
     That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral pow’r
     Spreads sleep o’er the cosmic throne
     And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and plain
     That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
     Sprung out of the tomb’s black maw
     To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,
     The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
     Shall some day be with the rest,
     And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,
     And the leprous spires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
     Of horror and death are penn’d,
     For the hounds of Time to rend.

~~
H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)
from The National Amateur, March 1926

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

H.P. Lovecraft bibliography

"Hallowe'en in a Suburb" read by Nick Gisburne. Courtesy Nick Gisburne (Gisburne2000).

Paradise Lost / James Lewis Milligan

Paradise Lost

Christmas days in visions rise,
Days before my years were seven,
Ere I grew so worldly wise,
When I saw with other eyes,
And this earth was heaven.

I have grown into a man,
And discarded every toy,
Yet the child I never can,
He is there like Peter Pan
An immortal boy !

Still he hangs on Christmas Eve
His wee stockings on the bed,
Falls asleep in make-believe,
While the happy fairies weave
Dreams about his head.

Though I've studied Nature's laws,
Probed the world unto the heart;
Trac'd life to its primal cause
That old mystic Santa Claus
Smiles at all my art!

All our fine philosophy,
All the wisdom of the wise,
Is but that old fatal tree;
And our early infancy
Our lost Paradise!

~~

James Lewis Milligan (1876-1961)

from Songs in Time's Despite, 1910

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

James Lewis Milligan biography

When May paints azure all above / Gertrude Hall

VI. When May paints azure all above 

When May paints azure all above,
And emerald all underfoot,
And charms to flower the withered root,
And warms to passion the staid dove,
Sing, bard! of hope, of joy, of love!

But when December saddens o'er
The land whence birds and leaves are gone,
When black nights come, and grey days dawn,
Sing, bard! sing louder than before,
Of joy, hope, love! louder and more!

~~
Gertrude Hall (1863-1961)
from The Age of Fairygold, 1899

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

Gertrude Hall biography