The Winter's Walk / John Hawkesworth

The Winter's Walk

Behold my fair where-e'er we rove,
What dreary prospects round us rise,
The naked hill, the leafless grove,
The hoary ground, the frowning skies.

Nor only through the wasted plain,
Stern Winter is thy force confest,
Still wider spreads thy horrid reign,
I feel thy power usurp my breast.

Enlivening hope, and fond desire,
Resign the heart to spleen and care,
Scarce frighted love maintains his fire,
And rapture saddens to despair.

In groundless hope, and causeless fear,
Unhappy man! behold thy doom,
Still changing with the changeful year
The slave of sunshine and of gloom.

Tir'd with vain joys, and false alarms,
With mental and corporeal strife,
Snatch me, my STELLA, to thy arms,
And screen me from the ills of life.

~~
John Hawkesworth (1720-1773)
from The Gentleman's Magazine, May 1747

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Hawkesworth biography

George Edmund's Song / Charles Dickens

George Edmund's Song

Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!
     How like the hopes of childhood’s day,
          Thick clust’ring on the bough!
     How like those hopes in their decay—
          How faded are they now!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!

Wither’d leaves, wither’d leaves, that fly before the gale:
Withered leaves, withered leaves, ye tell a mournful tale,
     Of love once true, and friends once kind,
          And happy moments fled:
     Dispersed by every breath of wind,
          Forgotten, changed, or dead!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!

~~
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
from The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens, 1903

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Charles Dickens biography

The Pity of the Leaves / Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Pity of the Leaves

Vengeful across the cold November moors,
Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak,
Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,
Reverberant through lonely corridors.
The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,  
Words out of lips that were no more to speak —
Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek
Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.
And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!
The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside
Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then
They stopped, and stayed there — just to let him know
How dead they were; but if the old man cried,
They fluttered off like withered souls of men.

~~
Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
from The Children of the Night, 1897

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

Edwin Arlington Robinson biography

Ghosts of Uncertainties / R.S. Mallari

Ghosts of Uncertainties

there are shadows over me
and creeping through my brain
why won’t they let me be?

had enough of these entities
I run, I hide, still they remain
there are shadows over me

a prisoner of uncertainty
they've locked me in chains
why won’t they let me be?

dragged by unseen enemies
tied to a runaway train
there are shadows over me

illusions, perhaps, they may be
I have fought, always in vain
why won’t they let me be?

free me from this misery
somebody, take away the pain
there are shadows over me
why won’t they let me be?

~~
R.S. Mallari
from Poems about Life

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

R.S. Mallari biography

In Autumn / Alice Meynell

In Autumn

The leaves are many under my feet,
 And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
 A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
 The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,–
 Only a summer's fate of rain,
And a woman's fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
 Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
 The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

I know his heart has beat to bright
 Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
 Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die to his delight.

O leaves, so quietly ending now,
 You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I will grow upon my bough
 If only for a Spring,
And fall when the rain is on my brow.

O tell me, tell me ere you die,
 Is it worth the pain?
You bloomed so fair, you waved so high;
 Now that the sad days wane,
Are you repenting where you lie?

I lie amongst you, and I kiss
 Your fragrance mouldering.
O dead delights, is it such bliss,
 That tuneful Spring?
Is love so sweet, that comes to this?

O dying blisses of the year,
 I hear the young lamb bleat,
The clamouring birds i' the copse I hear,
 I hear the waving wheat,
Together laid on a dead-leaf bier.

Kiss me again as I kiss you;
 Kiss me again;
For all your tuneful nights of dew,
 In this your time of rain,
For all your kisses when Spring was new.

You will not, broken hearts; let be.
 I pass across your death
To a golden summer you shall not see,
 And in your dying breath
There is no benison for me.

There is an Autumn yet to wane,
 There are leaves yet to fall,
Which when I kiss, may kiss again,
 And, pitied, pity me all for all,
And love me in mist and rain.

~~
Alice Meynell (1847-1922)
from Preludes, 1875

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

Alice Meynell biography

Night (Fall) / George J. Dance

Night (Fall)

The grass shone emerald in the morning light
But fades to gray now as the autumn moon
Glints off the darkened waters in the bight,
A stray reflection of some lost balloon.
The trees that I remember as so bright –
Persimmon, scarlet, orange, gold – at noon
Have dulled to tarry black and ghostly white
While round them heaps of curled gray ash are strewn.
So all has faded that was my delight
In early hours – Now sounds are out of tune,
Shades blur, words slur, once-dear beliefs are trite
And everything that lives must die too soon.
     Nothing besides remains within my sight
     But these few pale reflections in the night.

~~
George J. Dance, 2008
from Logos, and other logoi, 2021
 

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

George J. Dance biography

In Spring / Aline Kilmer

In Spring

I do not know which is worse when you are away:
    Long grey days with the lisping sound of the rain
And when the lilac dusk is beginning to fall
    The thought that perhaps you may never come back again;

Or days when the world is a shimmer of blue and gold,
    Sparkling newly in all the dear spring weather,
When with a heart that is torn apart by pain
    I walk alone in ways that we went together.

~~
Aline Kilmer (1888-1941)
from Candles that Burn, 1919

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

Aline Kilmer biography

A March Day in London / Amy Levy

A March Day in London

The east wind blows in the street to-day;
The sky is blue, yet the town looks grey.
'Tis the wind of ice, the wind of fire,
Of cold despair and of hot desire,
Which chills the flesh to aches and pains,
And sends a fever through all the veins.

From end to end, with aimless feet,
All day long have I paced the street.
My limbs are weary, but in my breast
Stirs the goad of a mad unrest.
I would give anything to stay
The little wheel that turns in my brain;
The little wheel that turns all day,
That turns all night with might and main.

What is the thing I fear, and why?
Nay, but the world is all awry--
The wind's in the east, the sun's in the sky.
The gas-lamps gleam in a golden line;
The ruby lights of the hansoms shine,
Glance, and flicker like fire-flies bright;
The wind has fallen with the night,
And once again the town seems fair
Thwart the mist that hangs i' the air.

And o'er, at last, my spirit steals
A weary peace ; peace that conceals
Within its inner depths the grain
Of hopes that yet shall flower again.

~~
Amy Levy (1861-1889)
from A London Plane-Tree, and other verse, 1889

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Amy Levy biography

Things / Aline Kilmer

 
Things

Sometimes when I am at tea with you,
     I catch my breath
At a thought that is old as the world is old
     And more bitter than death.

It is that the spoon that you just laid down
     And the cup that you hold
May be here shining and insolent
     When you are still and cold.

Your careless note that I laid away
     May leap to my eyes like flame;
When the world has almost forgotten your voice
     Or the sound of your name.

The golden Virgin da Vinci drew
     May smile on over my head,
And daffodils nod in the silver vase
     When you are dead.

So let moth and dust corrupt and thieves
     Break through and I shall be glad,
Because of the hatred I bear to things
     Instead of the love I had.

For life seems only a shuddering breath,
     A smothered, desperate cry;
And things have a terrible permanence
     When people die.

---
Aline Kilmer (1888-1941)
from Vigils, 1921

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

Aline Kilmer biography

"Desolation is a Delicate Thing" / Elinor Wylie

 
"Desolation is a Delicate Thing"

Sorrow lay upon my breast more heavily than winter clay
Lying imponderable upon the unmoving bosom of the dead;
Yet it was dissolved like a thin snowfall; it was softly withered away;
Presently like a single drop of dew it had trembled and fled.

This sorrow, which seemed heavier than a shovelful of loam,
Was gone like water, like a web of delicate frost;
It was silent and vanishing like smoke; it was scattered like foam;
Though my mind should desire to preserve it, nevertheless it is lost.

~~
Elinor Wylie (1889-1928)
from Trivial Breath, 1928

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

Elinor Wylie biography