The Lute-Player / Frank Pearce Sturm

The Lute-Player

Bartolomeo Veneto (d. 1555),

 Woman Playing a Lute,

ca. 1530. Wikimedia Commons.

Beloved, when I see your face
Move through this green and sunlit place,
Where the cool morning-thoughts of Spring
Passing, remember no past thing,
Where feathered tumult shakes the leaves,
But no lamenting lute-string grieves,
My heart is troubled: the tall grass
That bends and whispers while you pass
Would fade, did not your secret eyes
Hide their dreams from the open skies
Beneath drooped lids: did not your hands
Bind your strange heart with occult bands.
And the light sprays that bend green tips
To touch your pale brows and red lips,
Shrink and draw back in fear and shame,
For like some white immortal flame
That burns while Time is withering,
You stand among the buds of Spring.

Ah, take your seven-stringed lute, whose wires
Once wakened green and crimson fires
Out of the slumbering gems you wore,
And when my heart awakes once more
And the flame trembles, I will sing
How fugitive are Youth and Spring:
While scented blossoms from above
Drop down their petals on our love,
And grief becomes a grey content,
Seven strings, seven sorrows, lament, lament.

~~
Frank Pearce Sturm (1879-1942)
from An Hour of Reverie, 1905

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

Frank Pearce Sturm biography

When youthful faith has fled / John Gibson Lockhart

Lines

When youthful faith has fled,
   Of loving take thy leave;
Be constant to the dead —
   The dead cannot deceive.

Sweet modest flowers of spring,
   How fleet your balmy day!
And man's brief year can bring
   No secondary May.

No earthly burst again
   Of gladness out of gloom;
Fond hope and vision vain,
   Ungrateful to the tomb!

But 'tis an old belief,
   That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief,
   Dear friends will meet once more.

Beyond the sphere of time,
   And sin, and fate's control,
Serene in changeless prime
   Of body and of soul.

That creed I fain would keep,
   That hope I'll not forego;
Eternal be the sleep,
   Unless to waken so.

~~
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
from the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Gibson Lockhart biography

The Green Door / C.F. MacIntyre

The Green Door

from Rodomontades

Here in the May we danced on violets
  And blew off golden bubbles. Ah, my love,
How shall I name the sorrows and regrets
  I pluck, and the black drink I press thereof?

Now you dream deeply, wise in death’s great lore;      
  I lean above you where the crickets sing,
And fumble the dumb latch of the green door —
  You of the Maytime, lovely, wantoning.

~~
C.F. MacIntyre (1890-1967)
from Poetry, May 1920

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

C.F. MacIntyre biography

Penny's Top 20 / April 2018

Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in April 2018:

  1.  Easter Song, Francis Sherman
  2.  Tardy Spring, George Meredith 
  3.  April, Ralph Waldo Emerson
  4.  April Weather,  Edith Wyatt
  5.  Insanity, Maxwell Bodenheim
  6.  Leafless April, Ethelwyn Wetherald
  7.  April, William Carlos Williams
  8.  April, Katharine Tynan
  9.  April, G.A. Studdert Kennedy
10.  The Conjurer, George J. Dance

11.  The Reader, Wallace Stevens
12.  There Will Come Soft Rains, Sara Teasdale
13.  Two poems, Mark Turbyfill
14.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
15.  A Day in Spring, Richard Westall
16.  Spring's Immortality, Mackenzie Bell
17.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
18.  Green Boughs, Frank Pearce Sturm
19.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance  
20.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud


Source: Blogger, "Stats"

April / G.A. Studdert Kennedy

April

Breath of Spring,
Not come, but coming,
In the air.
Life of earth, not lived
But living,
Everywhere.
Promises, not made,
Nor broken,
But the token
Of promises that will be made.
Sunshine seeking shade,
Red earth, that smiles,
And asks for seed,
And mossy woodland paths, that lead
To where the yellow primrose grows.
And so for many coloured miles
Of open smiling France,
While noisy little streamlets dance,
In diamond mirrored suns,
To meet the stately Mother stream that flows,
With shining dignity,
To greet her Lord the sea,
And far away, beyond the hills, one hears,
Poor village Mother, hence thy tears,
The muffled thunder of the guns.

~~
G.A. Studdert Kennedy ("Woodbine Willy") (1883-1929)
from Rough Rhymes of a Padre, 1918

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

G.A. Studdert Kennedy biography

April / Katharine Tynan

April

A black North Wind that chills
New leaves and songs scarce sung;
It was not so in Aprils
When I was young.

Thrush-notes and blackbird-trills
The blossomy boughs among;
All in the leafy Aprils
When I was young.

Showers on the heavenly hills
Rainbow and silver hung;
Such tears and smiles were April's
When I was young.

Small streams and babbling rills,
Green ways where gossamers swung;
The young lambs leaped in Aprils
When I was young.

Daisies and daffodils,
Primroses newly sprung;
Fragrant and fresh the Aprils
When I was young.

Here in this town that kills,
The heart for cold is wrung.
It's O for the happy Aprils
When I was young!

~~
Katharine Tynan (1861-1931)
from Poems, 1901

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

Katharine Tynan biography

Leafless April / Ethelwyn Wetherald

Leafless April 

Leafless April chased by light,
    Chased by dark and full of laughter,
Stays a moment in her flight
    Where the warmest breezes waft her,
By the meadow brook to lean,
    Or where winter rye is growing,
Showing in a lovelier green
    Where her wayward steps are going.

Blithesome April brown and warm,
    Showing slimness through her tatters,
Chased by sun or chased by storm —
    Not a whit to her it matters.
Swiftly through the violet bed,
    Down to where the stream is flooding
Light she flits — and round her head
    See the orchard branches budding!

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from The House of the Trees, and other poems, 1895

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

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography