The Magician / Lilian Leveridge

from Angelo and Virgilia

I. The Magician

In the world to-night ’tis winter; whistling winds mad revels hold.
God hath cast His ice like morsels. Who can stand before His cold?
Yet a sunny softness lingers where the wild winds meet and part;
For ’tis springtime, rosy springtime — in my heart.

In the city street the lamplight shivers in the gusty blast.
Dim, dumb faces glance and vanish, hurrying footfalls echo past.
Yet I tread the vales of Springland; balmy airs about me blow
From the hillside where the scented blossoms grow.

Hoarsely roar the wheels of traffic, rushing on their tireless quest,
Where the shadows bring no silence, and the midnight hour no rest.
But they pass unheard, unheeded; for I live to-night apart,
Where the birds of morn are singing in my heart.

’Tis your clear, low tones make music, ’tis your touch has magic power
To transform the frozen desert into spring’s emblossomed bower.
’Neath the wan stars’ wintry glimmer, where the wild winds rush and part,
You have planted fragrant roses in my heart.

~~
Lilian Leveridge (1879-1953)
from A Breath of the Woods, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Lilian Leveridge biography

Penny's Top 20 / February 2020

Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in February 2020:

  1.   Silver Filigree, Elinor Wylie
  2.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme

  3.  A Winter Bluejay, Sara Teasdale

  4.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  5.  February, Folgore de San Geminiano
  6.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens
  7.  Love's Philosophy, Percy Bysshe Shelley
  8.  Shuttered House, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
  9.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
10.  Songs to Joannes XIII, Mina Loy

11.  Winter Memories, Henry David Thoreau
12.  February, Rebecca Hey
13.  Winter Poetry, Gladys Cromwell
14.  A Winter's Tale, Dylan Thomas
15.  Velvet Shoes, Elinor Wylie
16.  Fall of Stars, George H. Dillon
17.  News, AE Reiff
18.  Advice to a Butterfly, Maxwell Bodenheim
19.  Envoy, Ernest Dowson

20. Card Game, Frank Prewett

Source: Blogger, "Stats"

February / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

February

In February I give you gallant sport
    Of harts and hinds and great wild boars; and all
    Your company good foresters and tall,
With buskins strong, with jerkins close and short;
And in your leashes, hounds of brave report;
    And from your purses, plenteous money-fall,
    In very spleen of misers' starveling gall,
Who at your generous customs snarl and snort.
At dusk wend homeward, ye and all your folk
    All laden from the wilds, to your carouse,
        With merriment and songs accompanied:
And so draw wine and let the kitchen smoke;
    And so be till the first watch glorious;
        Then sound sleep to you till the day be wide.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[March]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (?1526-1569), The Hunters in the Snow, 1565. Wikimedia Commons.

February / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

February

Though Winter still asserts his right to reign,
He sways his sceptre now with gentler hand;
Nay, sometimes softens to a zephyr bland
The hurrying blast, which erst along the plain
Drove the skin-piercing sleet and pelting rain
In headlong rage; while, ever and anon,
He draws aside his veil of vapours dun,
That the bright sun may smile on us again.
To-day 'twould seem (so soft the west wind's sigh)
That the mild spirit of the infant Spring
Was brooding o'er the spots where hidden lie
Such early flowers as are the first to fling
On earth's green lap their wreaths of various dye —
Flowers, round whose forms sweet hopes and sweeter memories cling.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[March]

Rebecca Hey biography

Winter Memories / Henry David Thoreau

Winter Memories

Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,—
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the johnswort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb,
Its own memorial,— purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow:—
So by God's cheap economy made rich,
To go upon my winter's task again.

~~
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
from Poems of Nature, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Henry David Thoreau biography

"Winter Memories" sung by the American Poetry to Music AI Experiment Band.

A Winter Bluejay / Sara Teasdale

A Winter Bluejay

Crisply the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstasy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstasy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstasy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.
Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
“Oh look!”
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Rivers to the Sea, 1915

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

Sara Teasdale biography

"A Winter Bluejay" read by Dee Ernst. Courtesy Parsippany Library.

Songs to Joannes XIII / Mina Loy

from Songs to Joannes

XIII

Come to me   There is something
I have got to tell you   and I can't tell
Something taking shape
Something has a new name
A new dimension
A new use
A new illusion

It is ambient              And it is in your eyes
Something shiny       Something only for you
                                      Something that I must not see

It is in my ears           Something very resonant
Something that you must not hear
                                      Something only for me

Let us be very jealous
Very suspicious
Very conservative
Very cruel
Or we might not make an end of the jostling aspirations
Disorb inviolate egos

Where two or three are welded together
They shall become god
— — — — — — —
Oh that's right
Keep away from me   Please give me a push
Don't let me understand you   Don't realize me
Or we might tumble together
Depersonalized
Identical
Into the terrific Nirvana
Me you — you — me

~~ 

Mina Loy (1882-1966)

from Others, April 1917

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

Mina Loy biography

"Songs to Joannes" read by Oskar.

(Song XIII begins at 5:37)