October / Helen Hunt Jackson

from A Calendar of Sonnets

October

The month of carnival of all the year,
When Nature lets the wild earth go its way,
And spend whole seasons on a single day.
The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.
The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign
Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,
Oar empress wore, in Egypt's ancient line,
October, feasting 'neath her dome of blue,
Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through
Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!

~~
Helen Hunt Jackson 
from A Calendar of Sonnets, 1891 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

"October" read by Heather Stewart. Courtesy Christopher MacIntyre.

[November]

Helen Hunt Jackson biography

Penny's Top 20 / September 2012

Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in September  2012:

  1.  Penny (or Penny's Hat), George Dance
  2.  Esthétique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens
  4.  Fair Summer Droops, Thomas Campion
  5.  Heat, Archibald Lampman
  6.  Let me not to the marriage of true minds, William Shakespeare
  7.  Like Rain it sounded till it curved, Emily Dickinson
  8.  Drifting Away: A Fragment, Charles Kingsley
  9.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
10.  In Apple Time, Bliss Carman

11.  The Reader, Wallace Stevens
12.  Wedding Hymn, Sidney Lanier
13.  Let No Charitable Hope, Elinor Wylie
14.  A City Sunset, T.E. Hulme
15.  The End of the Summer, Ella Wheeler Wilcox
16.  Wind and Silver, Amy Lowell
17.  September, Helen Hunt Jackson
18.  The Golden Land, Francis Turner Palgrave
19.  In the Shadows, Pauline Johnson
20.  Late September, Amy Lowell

Source: Blogger, "Stats"

Late September / Amy Lowell

Late September

Tang of fruitage in the air;
Red boughs bursting everywhere;
Shimmering of seeded grass;
Hooded gentians all a'mass.

Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind
Tearing off the husky rind,
Blowing feathered seeds to fall
By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.

Beech trees in a golden haze;
Hardy sumachs all ablaze,
Glowing through the silver birches.
How that pine tree shouts and lurches!

From the sunny door-jamb high,
Swings the shell of a butterfly.
Scrape of insect violins
Through the stubble shrilly dins.

Every blade's a minaret
Where a small muezzin's set,
Loudly calling us to pray
At the miracle of day.

Then the purple-lidded night
Westering comes, her footsteps light
Guided by the radiant boon
Of a sickle-shaped new moon.

~~
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
from Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, 1914

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

Amy Lowell biography

"Late September" read by Ghizela Rowe. Courtesy The Orchard Enterprises.

September [1886] / Helen Hunt Jackson

from A Calendar of Sonnets

September

O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!
The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung
On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue
To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped
In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped;
And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among
The yellow gourds, which from the earth have wrung
Her utmost gold. To highest boughs have leaped
The purple grape,--last thing to ripen, late
By very reason of its precious cost.
O Heart, remember, vintages are lost
If grapes do not for freezing night-dews wait.
Think, while thou sunnest thyself in Joy's estate,
Mayhap thou canst not ripen without frost!

~~
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
from A Calendar of Sonnets, 1891 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

"September" read by Fox in the Stars. Courtesy LibriVox Listening Library.

[October]

Helen Hunt Jackson biography

Let me not to the marriage of true minds / William Shakespeare

CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
     If this be error and upon me prov'd,
     I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

~~
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
from Shakespeare's Sonnets (London: John Lane, 1899)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

"Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds" recited by Laurence Olivier. Courtesy Shakespeare Network.

William Shakespeare biography
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Analysis of Sonnet 116

Wedding Hymn / Sidney Lanier

Wedding Hymn

Thou God, whose high, eternal Love
Is the only blue sky of our life,
Clear all the Heaven that bends above
The life-road of this man and wife.
May these two lives be but one note
In the world’s strange-sounding harmony,
Whose sacred music e’er shall float
Through every discord up to Thee.
As when from separate stars two beams
Unite to form one tender ray:
As when two sweet but shadowy dreams
Explain each other in the day:
So may these two dear hearts one light
Emit, and each interpret each.
Let an angel come and dwell tonight
In this dear double-heart, and teach.

~~
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)
from Poems, 1891.

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Sidney Lanier biography

"Wedding Hymn" read by Narad. Courtesy Poems for Seekers.

The End of the Summer / Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The End of the Summer

The birds laugh loud and long together
When Fashion's followers speed away
At the first cool breath of autumn weather.
Why, this is the time, cry the birds, to stay!
When the deep calm sea and the deep sky over
Both look their passion through sun-kissed space,
As a blue-eyed maid and her blue-eyed lover
Might each gaze into the other's face.

Oh! this is the time when careful spying
Discovers the secrets Nature knows.
You find when the butterflies plan for flying
(Before the thrush or the blackbird goes),
You see some day by the water's edges
A brilliant border of red and black;
And then off over the hills and hedges
It flutters away on the summer's track.

The shy little sumacs, in lonely places,
Bowed all summer with dust and heat,
Like clean-clad children with rain-washed faces,
Are dressed in scarlet from head to feet.
And never a flower had the boastful summer,
In all the blossoms that decked her sod,
So royal hued as that later comer
The purple chum of the goldenrod.

Some chill grey dawn you note with grieving
That the King of Autumn is on his way.
You see, with a sorrowful, slow believing,
How the wanton woods have gone astray.
They wear the stain of bold caresses,
Of riotous revels with old King Frost;
They dazzle all eyes with their gorgeous dresses,
Nor care that their green young leaves are lost.

A wet wind blows from the East one morning,
The wood's gay garments looked draggled out.
You hear a sound, and your heart takes warning –
The birds are planning their winter route.
They wheel and settle and scold and wrangle,
Their tempers are ruffled, their voices loud;
Then whirr – and away in a feathered tangle,
To fade in the south like a passing cloud.

Envoi

A songless wood stripped bare of glory –
A sodden moor that is black and brown;
The year has finished its last love-story:
Oh! let us away to the gay bright town.

~~
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
from Poems of Sentiment, 1906

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

Ella Wheeler Wilcox biography