After Rain / Edward Thomas

After Rain

The rain of a night and a day and a night
Stops at the light
Of this pale choked day. The peering sun
Sees what has been done.
The road under the trees has a border new
Of purple hue
Inside the border of bright thin grass:
For all that has
Been left by November of leaves is torn
From hazel and thorn
And the greater trees. Throughout the copse
No dead leaf drops
On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern,
At the wind's return:
The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed
Are thinly spread
In the road, like little black fish, inlaid,
As if they played.
What hangs from the myriad branches down there
So hard and bare
Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see
On one crab-tree.
And on each twig of every tree in the dell
Uncountable
Crystals both dark and bright of the rain
That begins again.     

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Last Poems, 1918

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

Edward Thomas biography

"After Rain" read by The Wordman. Courtesy poemrecital.

Penny's Top 20 / November 2019

Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in November 2019:

  1.  1915: The Trenches, Conrad Aiken
  2.  Raglan Road, Patrick Kavanagh

  3.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

  4.  All Souls' Night, Frances Cornford
  5.  Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion, Wallace Stevens
  6.  Autumn, Christopher Brennan
  7.  November, Marorie Allen Seiffert
  8.  Coin of the Year, Clement Wood
  9.  Demons, George J. Dance
10.  Lunar Paraphrase, Wallace Stevens

11.   November, Robert Bridges
12.  The Blue Heron, Theodore Goodridge Roberts
13.  Winter Solitude, Archibald Lampman
14.  Jonah, AE Reiff
15.  Last Week in October, Thomas Hardy
16.  All Hallow's Night, Lizette Woodworth Reese
17.  The Bright Extensive Will, AE Reiff
18.  Once Like a Light, AE Reiff
19.  News, AE Reiff

20. New Year's Morning, Helen Hunt Jackson

Source: Blogger, "Stats"

Coin of the Year / Clement Wood

Coin of the Year

November, you old alchemist,
Who would have thought
You could turn the high arrogance of golden-rod
To still plumes of silver?

~~
Clement Wood (1888-1950)
from Poetry, December 1917

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

Photo: AnRo0002, 2011. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Clement Wood biography

Raglan Road / Patrick Kavanagh

Raglan Road

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay
O I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that’s known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say,
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay –
When the angel woos the clay he’d lose his wings at the dawn of day.

~~
Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)
from The Irish Times, October 1946

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Patrick Kavanagh biography

November / Robert Bridges

November

The lonely season in lonely lands, when fled
Are half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun
Is rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed;
The short days pass unwelcomed one by one.

— Out by the ricks the mantled engine stands
Crestfallen, deserted, — for now all hands
Are told to the plough, — and ere it is dawn appear
The teams following and crossing far and near,
As hour by hour they broaden the brown bands
Of the striped fields; and behind them firk and prance
The heavy rooks, and daws grey-pated dance:
As awhile, surmounting a crest, in sharp outline
(A miniature of toil, a gem's design,)
They are pictured, horses and men, or now near by
Above the lane they shout lifting the share,
By the trim hedgerow bloom'd with purple air;
Where, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie
Packed by the gales of Autumn, and in and out
The small wrens glide
With a happy note of cheer,
And yellow amorets flutter above and about,
Gay, familiar in fear.

— And now, if the night shall be cold, across the sky
Linnets and twites, in small flocks helter-skelter,
All the afternoon to the gardens fly,
From thistle-pastures hurrying to gain the shelter
Of American rhododendron or cherry-laurel:
And here and there, near chilly setting of sun,
In an isolated tree a congregation
Of starlings chatter and chide,
Thickset as summer leaves, in garrulous quarrel:
Suddenly they hush as one, —
The tree top springs, —
And off, with a whirr of wings,
They fly by the score
To the holly-thicket, and there with myriads more
Dispute for the roosts; and from the unseen nation
A babel of tongues, like running water unceasing,
Makes live the wood, the flocking cries increasing,
Wrangling discordantly, incessantly,
While falls the night on them self-occupied;
The long dark night, that lengthens slow,
Deepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,
And soon to bury in snow
The Earth, that, sleeping 'neath her frozen stole,
Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless pole
Of how her end shall be.

~~
Robert Bridges (1844-1930)
from Poetical Works, 1912

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

Robert Bridges biography

Autumn / Christopher Brennan

Autumn

Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death,
beside its dying sacrificial fire;
the dim world's middle-age of vain desire
is strangely troubled, waiting for the breath
that speaks the winter's welcome malison
to fix it in the unremembering sleep:
the silent woods brood o'er an anxious deep,
and in the faded sorrow of the sun,
I see my dreams' dead colours, one by one,
forth-conjur'd from their smouldering palaces,
fade slowly with the sigh of the passing year.
They wander not nor wring their hands nor weep,
discrown'd belated dreams! but in the drear
and lingering world we sit among the trees
and bow our heads as they, with frozen mouth,
looking, in ashen reverie, towards the clear
sad splendour of the winter of the far south.

~~
Christopher Brennan (1870-1932), 1906
from Poems, 1913

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

Christopher Brennan biography

"Autumn" read by ExtraOrdinary Prose.

Lunar Paraphrase / Wallace Stevens

Lunar Paraphrase

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

When, at the wearier end of November,
Her old light moves along the branches,
Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor,
Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,
Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter
Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;
When over the houses, a golden illusion
Brings back an earlier season of quiet
And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness —

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

~~
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), 1918
from Harmonium, 2nd edition, 1931

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

Wallace Stevens biography

"Lunar Paraphrase" read by Hans Ostrom.