Ballade of Midsummer Days and Nights / William Ernest Henley

Ballade of Midsummer Days and Nights

With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams —
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise —
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams —
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze —
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

There's a music of bells from the trampling teams,
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams —
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
And the nightingale as from prophet heights
Sings to the Earth of her million Mays —
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

Envoi

And it's O, for my dear and the charm that stays —
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
It's O, for my Love and the dark that plights —
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

~~
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)
from A Book of Verses, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Ernest Henley biography

A June-tide Echo / Amy Levy

A June-tide Echo

    (After a Richter concert.)

In the long, sad time, when the sky was grey,
And the keen blast blew through the city drear,
When delight had fled from the night and the day,
My chill heart whispered, "June will be here!

"June with its roses a-sway in the sun,
Its glory of green on mead and tree."
Lo, now the sweet June-tide is nearly done,
June-tide, and never a joy for me

Is it so much of the gods that I pray?
Sure craved man never so slight a boon!
To be glad and glad in my heart one day —
One perfect day of the perfect June.

Sweet sounds to-night rose up, wave upon wave;
Sweet dreams were afloat in the balmy air.
This is the boon of the gods that I crave —
To be glad, as the music and night were fair.

For once, for one fleeting hour, to hold
The fair shape the music that rose and fell
Revealed and concealed like a veiling fold;
To catch for an instant the sweet June spell.

For once, for one hour, to catch and keep
The sweet June secret that mocks my heart;
Now lurking calm, like a thing asleep,
Now hither and thither with start and dart.

Then the sick, slow grief of the weary years,
The slow, sick grief and the sudden pain;
The long days of labour, the nights of tears —
No more these things would I hold in vain.

I would hold my life as a thing of worth;
Pour praise to the gods for a precious thing.
Lo, June in her fairness is on earth,
And never a joy does the niggard bring.

~~
Amy Levy (1861-1889)
from A Minor Poet, and other verse, 1884

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Amy Levy biography

A Memory of June / Claude McKay

A Memory of June

When June comes dancing o'er the death of May,
With scarlet roses tinting her green breast,
And mating thrushes ushering in her day,
And Earth on tiptoe for her golden guest,

I always see the evening when we met —
The first of June baptized in tender rain —
And walked home through the wide streets, gleaming wet,
Arms locked, our warm flesh pulsing with love's pain.

I always see the cheerful little room,
And in the corner, fresh and white, the bed,
Sweet scented with a delicate perfume,
Wherein for one night only we were wed;

Where in the starlit stillness we lay mute,
And heard the whispering showers all night long,
And your brown burning body was a lute
Whereon my passion played his fevered song.

When June comes dancing o'er the death of May,
With scarlet roses staining her fair feet,
My soul takes leave of me to sing all day
A love so fugitive and so complete.

~~
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
from Spring in New Hampshire, and other poems, 1920

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

Claude McKay biography

"A Memory of June" read by David Novak. Courtesy David Novak Reads Poetry.

In June / Albert E.S. Smythe

In June

Oh! Wearily and wearily the days
     Have worn themselves from winter into June,
For tardily and tediously delays
     The summer's perfect loveliness of noon.
The sun that soars in heat and sinks in haze,
     The flowers that wrap themselves in scent and swoon,
The wind that hardly goes and hardly stays,
     The lazy birds that chirp a slothful tune,
The quiet rippling water running by,
     The leaves that rustle loosely overhead,
All peacefully I ponder as I lie
     Long thinking in my shady grass-grown bed,
And musing on them for a pastime try
     To realize the winter world instead,
And this seems like a dream before we die,
     And that is like a dream of lying dead.

~~
Albert E.S. Smythe
from Poems Grave and Gay, 1891

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

Albert E.S. Smythe biography

Bramble-Hill / William Allingham

Bramble-Hill

Not much to find, not much to see,
But the air is fresh, the path is free
On a lonely Hill where bramble grows
In tangling clumps, and the brooklet flows
Around its feet with whispering.
     Leaf-tufted are the vines in Spring;
The goldfinch builds, the hare has her form;
And when the nightless days are warm,
When grass grows high and small flowers peep,
Far and wide the trailers sweep
Their pinky silver blossoms, which
Are braided with a delicate stitch.
     The berries swell with Autumn's power;
Some are red and green and sour,
Some are black and juicy to bite,
Some have a maggot, some a blight.
Then frost-nipt leaves hang rusty and tatter'd,
With sleet and hail the bushes are batter'd,
A thorny brake on the barren hill,
Where the whistling blast blows chill.
But under the snow, amid the dark,
Sleeping waits the vernal spark.
    I had neither garden nor park.
On Bramble-Hill, by brake and stone,
Many a season I wandered lone,
With laughter, and pray'r, and singing, and moan;
In gray mist and in golden light,
Under the dawn and the starry night.
Not much to find, not much to see,
But the air was fresh, the path was free.

~~
William Allingham (1824-1889)
from Blackberries picked off many bushes, 1884

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Allingham biography

Spring Morning / A.A. Milne

Spring Morning

Where am I going? I don't quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow –
Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow –
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

Where am I going? The clouds sail by,
Little ones, baby ones, over the sky.
Where am I going? The shadows pass,
Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.

If you were a cloud, and sailed up there,
You'd sail on water as blue as air,
And you'd see me here in the fields and say:
"Doesn't the sky look green today?"

Where am I going? The high rooks call:
"It's awful fun to be born at all."
Where am I going? The ring-doves coo:
"We do have beautiful things to do."

If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"

Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow –
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

~~

A.A. Milne (1882-1956)

from When We Were Very Young, 1924

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

A.A. Milne biography

Spring Morning" read by Miss Katy. Courtesy Chatham County Public Libraries.

Penny's Top 20 - May 2013

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

  1.  Esthétique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  2.  Penny (or Penny's Hat), George Dance
  3.  The Cherry Tree, A.E. Housman
  4.  Men Made Out of Words, Wallace Stevens
  5.  Romance Novel / Roman, Arthur Rimbaud
  6.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme
  7.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens
  8.  The Blue Heron, Theodore Goodridge Roberts
  9.  To Blossoms, Robert Herrick
10.  When the Ash-Tree Buds and the Maples, Duncan Campbell Scott

11.  May Evening in Central Park, Amy Lowell
12.  The Reader, Wallace Stevens 
13.  Wind and Silver, Amy Lowell
14.  In May, F. Sackett
15.  Mother, Lola Ridge
16.  Barbara Allen's Cruelty
17.  May Wind, Sara Teasdale
18.  May, John Clare
19.  How true love is likened to summer, Thomas Malory
20.  The Dying Philosopher to His Fiddler, John Drinkwater


Source: Blogger, "Stats"