When the Ash-Tree Buds and the Maples / Duncan Cambell Scott

When the Ash-Tree Buds and the Maples

When the ash-tree buds and the maples,
And the osier wands are red,
And the fairy sunlight dapples
Dales where the leaves are spread,
The pools are full of spring water,
Winter is dead.

When the bloodroot blows in the tangle,
And the lithe brooks run,
And the violets gleam and spangle
The glades in the golden sun,
The showers are bright as the sunlight,
April has won.

When the color is free in the grasses,
And the martins whip the mere,
And the Maryland-yellow-throat passes,
With his whistle quick and clear,
The willow is full of catkins;
May is here.

Then cut a reed by the river,
Make a song beneath the lime,
And blow with your lips a-quiver,
While your sweetheart carols the rhyme;
The glamour of love, the lyric of life,
The springtime - the springtime.

~~
Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947)
from Labour and the Angel, 1898

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

Duncan Campbell Scott biography

In May / F. Sackett

In May

In May, sweet roses scent the air,
And glistening insects dart and blare.
Sweet springtime blossoms far and wide.
Dame Nature leaves stern tasks aside,
To garnish earth with tender care.

This happy month is ever fair;
As all things take the utmost care
To honor God's own Virgin Bride
In May.

At dusk, sweet Aves, heavenly prayer,
Attest men's love and are their share
In praising her, while side by side
Their voices sound to show their pride
In Mary, Queen of all that's fair
In May.

~~
F. Sackett
from Mary Immaculate, 1946

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Penny's Top 20 / April 2013

Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in April 2013:

  1.  Esthétique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  2.  Penny (or Penny's Hat), George Dance
  3.  Men Made Out of Words, Wallace Stevens
  4.  The Reader, Wallace Stevens
  5.  Things, Aline Kilmer
  6.  Spring Floods, Arthur Springer
  7.  Mars & Avril, George Dance
  8.  Lines Written in Early Spring, William Wordsworth
  9.  In Just-spring, E.E. Cummings
10. The Blue Heron, Theodore Goodridge Roberts

11.  The Spring Returns!, Charles Leonard Moore
12.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme
13.  The Piping Mountainy Man, Edward O'Brien
14.  When Spring Comes On, Charles Leonard Moore
15.  Bird Cage / Cage d'oiseau, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
16.  In Spring, Aline Kilmer
17.  April, John Clare
18.  Easter Day, Oscar Wilde
19.  Easter Week, Joyce Kilmer
20.  Wind and Silver, Amy Lowell

Source: Blogger, "Stats"

Penny's Top 100 of 2010

The 100 most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog during 2010, ranked in order:

   1. Penny (or Penny’s Hat), George J. Dance
   2. Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Wallace Stevens
   3. Mars & Avril, George J. Dance
   4. Esthétique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
   5. Romance Novel, Arthur Rimbaud

   6. Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens
   7. Penny’s OS, George J. Dance
   8. Ganesha Girl on Rankin, Will Dockery
   9. Autumn Song, George J. Dance
 10. Bird Cage / Cage d’oiseau, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

 11. The Cup, Duncan Campbell Scott
 12. September Night, George J. Dance
 13. Penny’s OS 2.0, George J. Dance
 14. A Sonnet of the Moon, Charles Best
 15. Vowels / Voyelles, Arthur Rimbaud

 16. Meditations in Time of Civil War, W.B. Yeats
 17. A Meadow in Spring, Tom Bishop
 18. baguette, David Rutkowski
 19. Nebula, Desi DiNardo
20. Fuji-san, George J. Dance

21. A Vagabond Song, Bliss Carman
22. March, George J. Dance
23. The Weary Man, Crystal Matteau
24 .High Flight, John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
25. White Sands Meet the Blue/Green Sea, Jeanne Ames

26. 4 poems, Tom Hendricks
27. In the Garden, George J. Dance
28. December, George J. Dance
29. Lorelei’s Song / Das Loreleylied, Heinrich Heine
30. Only the Lonely, George J. Dance

31. Always There, George J. Dance
32. You Are My Thorn, Kasia Lachowska
33. Puella Parvula, Wallace Stevens
34. To Autumn, William Blake
35. Threat, R.K. Singh

36. Men Made Out of Words, Wallace Stevens
37. Concrete, Ray Heinrich
38. Portrait, Shaun Hull
39. Jumbo Park, Stuart Leichter
40. Remembrance, George J. Dance

41. The Height of Land, Duncan Campbell Scott
42. Plow Sharing
43. The Smoker, nounofme
44. I know I am but summer to your heart, Edna St. Vincent Millay
45. Hero, Maureen Dance

46. 1914, Rupert Brooke
47. May, George J. Dance
48. News, A.E. Reiff
49. A Scroll, George J. Dance
50. Maui ‘70, Matt E.

51. Prison, Dave Holloway
52. The Whitening
53. Indian Summer, William Wilfred Campbell
54. Sticky Sweaty, rickthecockroach
55. The Hawk, Raymond Knister

56. Knowing, David W. Lewry
57. The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
58. Ground Zero, Shaun Hull
59. The Anxious Dead, John McCrae
60. S.I.W., Wilfred Owen

61. War is Kind, Stephen Crane
62. Sonny Rollins
63. Who Was Here First, David George
64. The Masterpiece of Dawn, Leslie Moon
65. Principia Poetica, Obsidian Eagle

66. Envoy, Ernest Dowson
67. Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy
68. Haiku and triolet, R.S. Mallari
69. A Christmas Greeting, Walt Whitman
70. When Mary the Mother kissed the Child, Charles G.D. Roberts

71. Snow, Madison Cawein
72. Poem with Rhythms, Wallace Stevens
73. The Book of Wisdom, Stephen Crane
74. Autumn’s Orchestra, Pauline Johnson
75. After the Winter, Claude McKay

76. The Gravedigger, Bliss Carman
77. The May Magnificat, Gerard Manley Hopkins
78. Shanghai, David Rutkowski
79. Mistletoe, Walter de la Mare
80. Ghost Yard of the Goldenrod, Bliss Carman

81. Good is Good. It is a Beautiful Night., Wallace Stevens
82. River of My Eyes / Rivière  de mes yeux, Hector de Saint-Denys
        Garneau
83. The Dying Philosopher To His Fiddler, John Drinkwater
84. July, George J. Dance
85. Sagacity, William Rose Benet

86. Boy Remembers in the Field, Raymond Knister
87. Tichborne’s Elegy, Chidiock Tichbourne
88. The Stretcher-Bearer, Robert Service
89. Break of Day in the Trenches, Isaac Rosenberg
90. O Holy Night / Minuit, chrétiens, Placide Cappeau

91. Christmas Bells, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
92. The Oxen, Thomas Hardy
93. The Flute of Spring, Bliss Carman
94. Let No Charitable Hope, Elinor Wylie
95. Minstrels, William Wordsworth

96. The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy
97. Old Christmas, Mary Howitt
98. Things, Aline Kilmer
99. If I should learn, in some quite casual way, Edna St. Vincent
        Millay
100. Spring Breaks in Foam, Charles G.D. Roberts

Penny Blog changing copyright information tags

Effective this month,  The Penny Blog will be changing the copyright information tags displayed on some poems. Until now, we have been using four tags:
1) A Creative Commons tag, for poems that are under copyright but licensed under a Creative Commons license;
2) "[All rights reserved by the author [or the author's estate] - used with permission]" for other poems that are under copyright in Canada;
3) "[All rights reserved by the author's estate - Please do not copy]" for poems that are in the public domain in Canada, but still under copyright somewhere in the world'
4) "[Poem is in the public domain]" for poems that are in the public domain worldwide.

In the interest of providing our readers with more accurate information, we have decided to replace the third tagline with the following 4 tags:
3) "[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]" for poems published in their authors' lifetime, the authors of which died at least 50 years before last December 31 (that is, for this year, on or before December 31, 1962);
4) "[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]" for poems published in their authors' lifetime, the authors of which died at least 70 years before last December 31 (that is, for this year, on or before December 31, 1942);
5) "[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]" for poems originally published in 1922 or earlier, the authors of which died at least 50 years before last December 31; and
6) "[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]" for poems originally published in 1922 or earlier, the authors of which died at least 70 years before last December 31.

In addition, the existing public domain tagline (for poems published in their authors' lifetime, the authors of which died at least 100 years before last December 31) will be replaced with the tag:
7) "[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]".

This will allow the majority of our readers to tell whether a poem can be copied or not in their jurisdictions. Readers outside those jurisdictions will also be able to use those notices: in Australia or Russia, for example, in which the copyright term is identical with the European Union.

These tags will be added to poems in the future, based on our own best knowledge. In addition, we will be working backwards to add them to poems previously published on the blog. The new tags have already been added to all poems published in 2013.

Penny and I hope that readers of  The Penny Blog will find these new tags both informative and useful.

in Just- / E.E. Cummings

from Chansons Innocentes

    I

in Just-
spring      when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles      far      and wee

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far       and       wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
       the
             goat-footed

baloonMan       whistles
far
and
wee

~~
E.E. Cummings (1894-1962), 1920
from The Dial, May 1920

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

E.E. Cummings biography

"in Just-" read by E.E. Cummings. Courtesy sufanxphile.

The Piping Mountainy Man / Edward J. O'Brien

The Piping Mountainy Man

To Josephine Peabody Marks.

As I came over the April hills
And over the April plain,
I saw a twinkle of white-limbed boys
In a shower of April rain.

A drift of shining fair-limbed boys
In the light of an April shower
Were dancing around a mountainy man
Like the petals of a flower.

A wind came over the April hills
And over the April rain;
The sunlight laughed from an April cloud
And the Spring laughed back again.

The mountainy man arose and piped
A skirling on the wind,
And the drift of shining white-limbed boys
Came skipping along behind.

They followed him over the meadows,
And sang by the running rills,
And danced with him in the sunlight,
And laughed with him on the hills,

Till they came to the edge of the ocean,
And ran to the end of the lea,
Where they dance on the rippling waters,
And run on the sands of the sea.

~~
Edward J. O'Brien
from White Fountain: Odes and lyrics, 1917

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

Edward J. O'Brien biography