Alabanza / Martin Espada

"Alabanza" read by Martin Espada. Courtesy CSMDTube.

Martin Espada biography

In Apple Time / Bliss Carman

In Apple Time

The apple harvest days are here,
     The boding apple harvest days,
     And down the flaming valley ways,
The foresters of time draw near,

Through leagues of bloom I went with Spring,
     To call you on the slopes of morn,
     Where in imperious song is borne
The wild heart of the goldenwing.

I roamed through alien summer lands,
     I sought your beauty near and far;
     To-day, where russet shadows are,
I hold your face between my hands.

On runnels dark by slopes of fern,
     The hazy undern sleeps in sun.
     Remembrance and desire, undone,
From old regret to dreams return.

The apple harvest time is here,
     The tender apple harvest time;
     A sheltering calm, unknown at prime,
Settles upon the brooding year.

 ~~
Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
from Low Tide on Grand Pre, 1893

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

Bliss Carman biography

Drifting Away: A Fragment / Charles Kingsley

Drifting Away: A Fragment

They drift away.  Ah, God! they drift for ever.
I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea,
Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river,
Round whom the tide-waifs hang — then drift to sea.

I watch them drift — the old familiar faces,
Who fished and rode with me, by stream and wold,
Till ghosts, not men, fill old beloved places,
And, ah! the land is rank with churchyard mold.

I watch them drift — the youthful aspirations,
Shores, landmarks, beacons, drift alike.
. . . . .
I watch them drift — the poets and the statesmen;
The very streams run upward from the sea.
   . . . . . .
   Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven
   Still fades to night, still blazes into day.
   . . . . .
   Ah, God!  My God!  Thou wilt not drift away.

~~
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
from Andromeda, and other poems, 1858

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Charles Kingsley biography

"Drifting Away: A Fragment" read for Audiobook Passion.

Penny's Top 20 / August 2012

Penny's Top 20
The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in August 2012:

  1.  Penny (or Penny's Hat), George Dance
  2.  Esthétique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  3.  Men Made Out of Words, Wallace Stevens
  4.  For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon
  5.  The Reader, Wallace Stevens 
  6.  A Day in June, James Russell Lowell
  7.  Newark Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock
  8.  Olympian Ode 14, Pindar
  9.  Afterglow, George Dance 
10.  In August, Paul Laurence Dunbar

11.  Song: Has summer come without the rose?, Arthur O'Shaughnessy
12.  Evening on the Marshes, Barry Straton 
13.  To an Athlete Dying Young, A.E. Housman
14.  August, Christopher Pearse Cranch
15.  August, Helen Hunt Jackson
16.  The Beach in August, Weldon Kees
17.  Accompaniment / Accompagnement, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
18.  Love is not all, Edna St. Vincent Millay
19.  Vowels / Voyelles, Arthur Rimbaud
20.  Summer Dawn, William Morris

Source: Blogger, "Stats"

Heat / Archibald Lampman

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
  The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
  Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half-way, or it may be
  Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
  With idly clacking wheels.

By his cart's side the wagoner
  Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur
  Of white dust puffing to his knees.
This wagon on the height above,
  From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
  In all the heat-held land.

Beyond me in the fields the sun
  Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
  Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
  Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
  The cool gloom of the bridge.

Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
  Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
  Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
  Into the pale depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
  His thin revolving tune.

In intervals of dreams I hear
  The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
  A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
  The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze:
  The hills are drenched in light.

And yet to me not this or that
  Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
  I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessed power
  Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour
  My thoughts grow keen and clear.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1887
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

In the Shadows / Pauline Johnson

In the Shadows

I am sailing to the leeward,
Where the current runs to seaward
Soft and slow,
Where the sleeping river grasses
Brush my paddle as it passes
To and fro.

On the shore the heat is shaking
All the golden sands awaking
In the cove;
And the quaint sand-piper, winging
O'er the shallows, ceases singing
When I move.

On the water's idle pillow
Sleeps the overhanging willow,
Green and cool;
Where the rushes lift their burnished
Oval heads from out the tarnished
Emerald pool.

Where the very silence slumbers,
Water lilies grow in numbers,
Pure and pale;
All the morning they have rested,
Amber crowned, and pearly crested,
Fair and frail.

Here, impossible romances,
Indefinable sweet fancies,
Cluster round;
But they do not mar the sweetness
Of this still September fleetness
With a sound.

I can scarce discern the meeting
Of the shore and stream retreating,
So remote;
For the laggard river, dozing,
Only wakes from its reposing
Where I float.

Where the river mists are rising,
All the foliage baptizing
With their spray;
There the sun gleams far and faintly,
With a shadow soft and saintly,
In its ray.

And the perfume of some burning
Far-off brushwood, ever turning
To exhale
All its smoky fragrance dying,
In the arms of evening lying,
Where I sail.

My canoe is growing lazy,
In the atmosphere so hazy,
While I dream;
Half in slumber I am guiding,
Eastward indistinctly gliding
Down the stream.

~~

---
E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (1861-1913)
from Songs of the Great Dominion, 1889

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Pauline Johnson biography

"In the Shadows" read by Betsy Bush for LibriVox. Courtesy Audio Books.

Fair Summer Droops / Thomas Nashe

Fair Summer Droops

Fair summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore,
So fair a summer look for nevermore:
    All good things vanish less than in a day,
    Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay.
        Go not yet hence, bright soul of the sad year,
        The earth is hell when thou leav’st to appear.

What, shall those flowers that decked thy garland erst,
Upon thy grave be wastefully dispersed?
    O trees, consume your sap in sorrow’s source,
    Streams, turn to tears your tributary course.
        Go not yet hence, bright soul of the sad year,
        The earth is hell when thou leav’st to appear.

~~
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)
from Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Nashe biography
Summer's Last Will and Testament

"Fair Summer Droops" ready by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy The Orchard Enterprises.