To My Mother / Edgar Allan Poe

To My Mother

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
    The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
    None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you —
    You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
    In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother — my own mother, who died early,
    Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
    And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

~~
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
from Poetical Works, 1858

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edgar Allan Poe biography

"To My Mother" read by The Wandering Paddy AKA Jamie.

The Locust Tree in Flower (First Version) / William Carlos Williams

The Locust Tree in Flower

(First Version)

Among
the leaves
bright

green
of wrist-thick
tree

and old
stiff broken
branch

ferncool
swaying
loosely strung —
come May
again
white blossom

clusters
hide
to spill

their sweets
almost
unnoticed

down
and quickly
fall

~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
from An Early Martyr, and other poems, 1935

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

William Carlos Williams biography

Friday Musa, Locust Bean Tree at Samaru, 2023. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Spring Morning / Frances Cornford

Spring Morning

Now the moisty wood discloses
Wrinkled leaves of primèroses,
While the birds, they flute and sing:
Build your nests, for here is Spring.

All about the open hills
Daises shew their peasant frills,
Washed and white and newly spun
For a festival of sun.

Like a blossom from the sky,
Drops a yellow butterfly.
Dancing down the hedges grey
Snow-bestrewn till yesterday.

Squirrels skipping up the trees
Smell how Spring is in the breeze,
While the birds, they flute and sing:
Build your nests, for here is Spring.

~~
Frances Cornford (1886-1960)
from Spring Morning, 1923

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

Frances Cornford biography

"Spring Morning" (first poem) read by AnnaLisa Bodtker, Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

Green Things Growing / Dinah Maria Craik

Green Things Growing

O the green things growing, the green things growing,
The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!
I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,
Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.

O the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!
How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;
In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight
Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing.

I love, I love them so – my green things growing!
And I think that they love me, without false showing;
For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much,
With the soft mute comfort of green things growing.

And in the rich store of their blossoms glowing
Ten for one I take they're on me bestowing:
Oh, I should like to see, if God's will it may be,
Many, many a summer of my green things growing!

But if I must be gathered for the angel's sowing,
Sleep out of sight awhile, like the green things growing,
Though dust to dust return, I think I'll scarcely mourn,
If I may change into green things growing.

~~
Dinah Maria Craik (1826-1887)

from Thirty Years: Being poems new and old, 1881

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Dinah Maria Craik biography

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Woman Sitting in the Garden, 1876 (detail).

Public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

May's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for May 2024:

May Evening in Central Park, by Amy Lowell

[...]

I am a lover 

Tracking the silver foot-prints 

Of the moon. 

I am a young man, 

In Central Park,     

With Spring 

Bursting over me. 

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-central-park.html

 

Penny's Top 20 / April 2024

                                   

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in April 2024:

  1.  April Weather, Edith Wyatt

  2.  A Morning Song (for the First Day of Spring), Eleanor Farjeon

  3.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  4.  Winter Ghost (Taking a Time Out), Will Dockery

  5.  Bird Cage, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

  6.  February, George J. Dance
  7.  Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach 

  8.  Darkness, Lord Byron
  9.  When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, Walt Whitman

10.  August, Edmund Spenser

11.  Sea-Fever, John Masefield
12.  June Rain, Richard Aldington

13.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens

14.  Song at Parting, Francis Sherman
15.  An April Rain Song, Langston Hughes

16.  April in the Hills, Archibald Lampman

17.  April, Edwin Arnold

18.  The April Day, Caroline Bowles Southey
19.  June Rain, Louise Driscoll

20. April Rain, Lew Sarett

Source: Blogger, "Stats"  

I Met the Rain / Louise Driscoll

I Met the Rain

I met the rain today in an open place,
    The young rain, adventuring, she danced as she came along.
Her dress was all of silver, she had a smiling face,
    And she sang to the dusty trees, a little song.

The dusty trees were glad and they clapped their hands.
    I saw a tired flower turn and smile.
At the bend of a little path where a linden stands,
    I watched the rain at play for a little while.

Her feet were small and they trod on the grass and bent it.
    She carried a scarf of mist that brushed my cheek.
She shook an odor out on the air to scent it,
    She bent to the barberries and I heard her speak.

I saw the rain go by like a girl with laughter,
    But I will never tell you the word she said.
That you must learn yourself and forever after
    Know how the leaves and grass are comforted.

I stood at a bend in the path and the rain went by me.
    I could see, like a skein of silk, her shining hair,
She turned with a little smile to satisfy me,
    For all the while she knew that I was there.

~~
Louise Driscoll (1875-1957)
from The Garden of the West, 1922

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

Louise Driscoll biography

DALL-E, "Kounu – Guardian Goddess of the Northern Direction & Lady of the Northern

 Mountains – Giver of Good Rainfall," 2024 (detail). Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.