First Week in October / Charles Tennyson Turner

    CCIV

The First Week in October

Once on an autumn day as I reposed
Beneath a noonbeam, pallid yet not dull,
The branch above my head dipt itself full
Of that white sunshine momently, and closed;
While, ever and anon, the ashen keys
Dropt down beside the tarnished hollyhocks,
The scarlet cranesbill. and the faded stocks,
Flung from the shuffling leafage by the breeze.
How wistfully I marked the year's decay,
Forecasting all the dreary wind and rain;
'Twas the last week the swallow would remain.
How jealously I watched his circling play!
A few brief hours, and he would dart away,
No more to turn upon himself again.

~~
Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-1879) 
from Collected Sonnets, 1880 

 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Charles Tennyson Turner biography

                        Image from Studies in Reading, 1919. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

September / Edward Bliss Reed

September

Crickets are making
    The merriest din,
All the fields waking
    With shrill violin.

Now all the swallows
    Debate when to go;
In the valleys and hollows
    The mists are like snow.

Dahlia are glowing
    In purple and red
Where once were growing
    Pale roses instead.

Piled up leaves smoulder,
    All hazy the noon,
Nights have grown colder,
    The frost will some soon.

Early lamps burning,
    So soon the night falls,
Leaves, crimson turning,
    Make bright the stone walls.

Summer recalling
    At turn of the year,
Fruit will be falling,
    September is here.

~~
Edward Bliss Read (1872-1940)
from Sea Moods, and other poems, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain]

Edward Bliss Read biography

Ulisse Albiati, "Sight VI". CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

August Moonrise / Sara Teasdale

August Moonrise

The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.
I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,
And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.
Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild
Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,
Something nearer your desire;
If my soul must go alone
Through a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped you.

Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

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

Sara Teasdale biography

"August Moonrise" read by Wildling Darlings.

False February / John Payne

False February

Not seldom, whilst the Winter yet is king,
Whilst yet the meads are mute and boughs are bare,
A stirring in the February air
There comes, as with a faint foreshadowing,
A passing prophecy of far-off Spring
And distant days, when all the world shall wear
The lovely liveries of Summer fair,
That sets our wintry thought upon the wing.
Well though we know the thing's a Winter's trick,
To hold the soul with expectation sick,
And he will soon resume his iron reign,
Yet our fond hearts alone with hope in vain
Swell not; for hark, the swallows in the eaves
Rejoice as though the world were lush with leaves.

~~
John Payne (1842-1916)
from Vigil and Vision; New sonnets, 1903

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Payne biography

There Will Come Soft Rains / Sara Teasdale

There Will Come Soft Rains

(For war time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), 1918
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

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

Sara Teasdale biography

"There Will Come Soft Rains" read & illustrated by Xulin Wang.

The Soul of Summer / Edward Sapir

The Soul of Summer

Incessant chatter of blackbirds over the flags,
Sinuous falls of the swallows and sudden turns,
Short flights, preoccupied, of the robin mothers —
This is the living summer, this is summer.

The fine dust drifts in the torpid air, sluggish —
A faint-blue shadow veil hung before green,
A dry hush on the grass stalks, on the corn stalks —
Lazy dust-drift of the heavy summer.

This is summer fulfilled, this is the summer
Of waiting wings, still wings in passionate tremor.
This is the summer when torpor blossoms to storms
And throbbing wings burst out to the height of the wind.

I too know the summer, I know the summer
Of light poured on the soft white of her neck;
I know the hair that flashed in the summer sun.    
I know the summer whose laughter pierced my heart.

~~
Edward Sapir (1884-1939)
from Poetry, August 1919

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

Edward Sapir biography

To Fredericton in May-Time / Charles G.D. Roberts

To Fredericton in May-Time

This morning, full of breezes and perfume,
     Brimful of promise of midsummer weather,
     When bees and birds and I are glad together,
Breathes of the full-leaved season, when soft gloom
Chequers thy streets, and thy close elms assume
     Round roof and spire the semblance of green billows;
     Yet now thy glory is the yellow willows,
The yellow willows, full of bees and bloom.
Under their dusty blossoms blackbirds meet,
     And robins pipe amid the cedars nigher;
Thro’ the still elms I hear the ferry’s beat;
     The swallows chirp about the towering spire;
The whole air pulses with its weight of sweet;
     Yet not quite satisfied is my desire!

---
Charles G.D. Roberts (1860-1943), 1881
from In Divers Tones, 1886

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

Charles G.D. Roberts biography

Poets' Corner, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB.

Courtesy MyNewBrunswick.ca.