Even in the bluest noonday of July / Robert Louis Stevenson

Ismael Valladolid Torres, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris July 2002.

CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

To Mrs. Will. H. Low

Even in the bluest noonday of July,
There could not run the smallest breath of wind
But all the quarter sounded like a wood;
And in the chequered silence and above
The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois,
Suburban ashes shivered into song.
A patter and a chatter and a chirp
And a long dying hiss — it was as though
Starched old brocaded dames through all the house
Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky
Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain.

Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks
Of the near autumn, how the smitten ash
Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long
In these inconstant latitudes delay,
O not too late from the unbeloved north
Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof
Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes
Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms,
Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.

~~
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
from Underwoods, 1891

[Poem is in the public domain]

Robert Louis Stevenson biography

"To Mrs. Will H. Low" read for Audiobook Passion.

July's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured poem for July 2025:

Summer 1969, by Michael G. Munoz

The first turn of July heat

And I was growing fast

Leaning into the sun

Like the nascent fan palms sprouting up

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2012/07/summer-1969.html

I Am a Canadian / John Diefenbaker

I Am a Canadian

I am a Canadian,
a free Canadian,
free to speak without fear,
free to worship God in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
free to choose who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom
I pledge to uphold
for mysef and all mankind.

~~
John G. Diefenbaker (1895-1979)
from Hansard, July 1, 1960
(a found poem)

(courtesy Flickr.com)

"I Am a Canadian" courtesy CdnPoli.

Penny's Top 20 / June 2025

   

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in June 2025:

  1.  Mind on a Wander, JD Shirk

  2.  Wander-Thirst, Gerald Gould

  3.  Metric Figure, William Carlos Williams

  4.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

  5.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  6.  Daddy, Sylvia Plath

  7.  My Father, Ann Taylor

  8.  June Rain, Richard Aldington

  9.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

10.  June, Folgore da San Geminiano

11.   Spring Again, George J. Dance

12.  A Summer Invocation, Walt Whitman

13.  Laurentian Lure, Arthur S. Bourinot

14.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

15.  June Days, Charles Lotin Hildreth

16.  A June Day, John Todhunter

17.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens

18.  In the Fields, Charlotte Mew

19.  May, Folgore da San Geminiano

20. Ballad of the Goodly Fere, Ezra Pound

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

June / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

June

In June I give you a close-wooded fell,
    With crowns of thicket coil'd about its head,
    With thirty villas twelve times turreted,
All girdling round a little citadel;
And in the midst a springhead and fair well
    With thousand conduits branch'd and shining speed,
    Wounding the garden and the tender mead,
Yet to the freshen'd grass acceptable.
And lemons, citrons, dates, and oranges,
    And all the fruits whose savour is most rare,
Shall shine within the shadow of your trees;
    And every one shall be a lover there;
Until your life, so fill'd with courtesies,
    Throughout the world be counted debonair.

~~
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]

[July]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Peasants picking fruit, from Une Compilation d’œuvres d’Art Médiévales Liées: 

Aux Pommes et aux Vergers, 19th century. Courtesy Orchard Notes.

A June Day / John Todhunter

A June Day

The very spirit of summer breathes to-day,
Here where I sun me in a dreamy mood,
And laps the sultry leas, and seems to brood
Tenderly o'er those hazed hills far away.
The murmurous air, fragrant of new-mown hay,
Drowses, save when martins at gleeful feud,
Gleam past in undulant flight. Yon hillside wood
Is drowned in sunshine, till its green looks grey,
No scrap of cloud is in the still blue sky,
Vaporous with heat, from which the foreground trees
Stand out, each leaf cut sharp. A whetted scythe
Makes rustic music for me as I lie,
Glad in the mirth of distant children blithe,
Drinking the season's sweetness to the lees.

~~
John Todhunter (1839-1916)
from Laurella, and other poems, 1876

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Todhunter biography

"A June Day" read for Unwanted Narrator.

A Summer Invocation / Walt Whitman

A Summer Invocation

Thou orb aloft full dazzling,
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand;
Thou sibilant near sea, with vistas far, and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades, and spreading blue;
Before I sing the rest, O sun refulgent,
My special word to thee.
Hear me, illustrious!
Thy lover me — for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe—then happy boy alone by some wood edge — thy touching distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old —a s now to thee I launch my invocation.
(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive.
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields.
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice—and thou, O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic,
I understand them — I know those flames, those perturbations well.)
Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O'er myriad forms — o'er lands and waters, North and South,
O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains, Kanada's woods,
O'er all the globe, that turns its face to thee, shining in space,
Thou that impartially enfoldest all — not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me — mellow these lines.
Fuse thyself here — with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions,
Strike through this chant.
Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for this;
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself — prepare my lengthening shadows.
Prepare my starry nights.

~~
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
from The American, June 1881

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Walt Whitman biography

Guilhem Vellut, Sun & Blue Sky, 2021. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.