Take bitterness into your wailing; Be like the rock, the hard gray stone; See there is hunger in your ailing, Walk scornfully and alone. Walk scornfully on the fall-brown hills; And maybe where the wind heaves And scatters the littered poplar leaves, Releasing tardy ones to the ground, You will hear the faint authentic sound And remember why the wind grieves.
~~ Maurice Lesemann (1899-1981) from Poetry, April 1920
[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]
Frequent contributor toThePennyBlogAE Reiff has a new book, The True Light that Lights, published by Parousia Reads in October as part of its Parousia Christian Poetry Chapbook series. Copies for Kindle can be ordered on Amazon here.
Reiff has been a long-time contributor to Penny's Poetry Blog. A selection of his work, including poems from his new book, can be read here.
Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.
Lonely and sad, a specter glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, though his song
Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
Only the few who sorcery's secret know,
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.
~~ H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) from Weird Tales, 1938
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]
"Where Once Poe Walked" animation by Jim Clark 2014
This autumn afternoon
My fancy need invent
No untried sacrament.
Man can still commune
With Beauty as of old:
The tree, the wind’s lyre,
The whirling dust, the fire —
In these my faith is told.
Beauty warms us all;
When horizons crimson burn,
We hold heaven’s cup in turn.
The dry leaves gleaming fall,
Crumbs of mystical bread;
My dole of Beauty I break,
Love to my lips I take,
And fear is quieted.
The symbols of old are made new:
I watch the reeds and the rushes,
The spruce trees dip their brushes
In the mountain’s dusky blue;
The sky is deep like a pool;
A fragrance the wind brings over
Is warm like hidden clover,
Though the wind itself is cool.
Across the air, between
The stems and the grey things,
Sunlight a trellis flings.
In quietude I lean:
I hear the lifting zephyr
Soft and shy and wild;
And I feel earth gentle and mild
Like the eyes of a velvet heifer.
Love scatters and love disperses.
Lightly the orchards dance
In a lovely radiance.
Down sloping terraces
They toss their mellow fruits.
The rhythmic wind is sowing,
Softly the floods are flowing
Between the twisted roots.
What Beauty need I own
When the symbol satisfies?
I follow services
Of tree and cloud and stone.
Color floods the world;
I am swayed by sympathy;
Love is a litany
In leaf and cloud unfurled.
I know where the oaks and maples
Are setting the hills ablaze,
And the elms and the amber beeches
Are gilding the woodland ways.
I know where the scarlet sumachs
Are holding their torches high,
And the soft, blue smoke of the asters
Floats up to the rim of sky.
I know where the ripe nuts cluster —
Brown twins in a burly husk —
On the ridge where the crested bluejay
Wings home in the frosty dusk;
Where the killdeer calls in the starlight
His plaintive and weird good-night,
And the silence is stirred by the wing-beats
Of geese on their southward flight.
I know where a forest pathway
Winds on to the rim of the world,
Where smoke-wreaths hang in the twilight,
Like banners of love unfurled,
O’er an old grey house in the valley.
O see, in the autumn gloam,
Like beacons lit for a welcome,
The beckoning lights of home.
~~ Lilian Leveridge (1879-1953) from The Blossom Trail, 1932 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
