November / Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

November

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;
Long have I listened to the wailing wind,
And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds,
For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:
The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;
The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail
Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,
The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:
They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's bier
These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods.
Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;
The naked, silent trees have taught me this,—
The loss of beauty is not always loss!

~~
Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (1823-1902)
from Poems, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Elizabeth Drew Stoddard biography

George Edmund's Song / Charles Dickens

George Edmund's Song

Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!
     How like the hopes of childhood’s day,
          Thick clust’ring on the bough!
     How like those hopes in their decay—
          How faded are they now!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!

Wither’d leaves, wither’d leaves, that fly before the gale:
Withered leaves, withered leaves, ye tell a mournful tale,
     Of love once true, and friends once kind,
          And happy moments fled:
     Dispersed by every breath of wind,
          Forgotten, changed, or dead!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!

~~
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
from The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens, 1903

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Charles Dickens biography

The Pity of the Leaves / Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Pity of the Leaves

Vengeful across the cold November moors,
Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak,
Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,
Reverberant through lonely corridors.
The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,  
Words out of lips that were no more to speak —
Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek
Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.
And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!
The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside
Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then
They stopped, and stayed there — just to let him know
How dead they were; but if the old man cried,
They fluttered off like withered souls of men.

~~
Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
from The Children of the Night, 1897

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

Edwin Arlington Robinson biography

Ghosts of Uncertainties / R.S. Mallari

Ghosts of Uncertainties

there are shadows over me
and creeping through my brain
why won’t they let me be?

had enough of these entities
I run, I hide, still they remain
there are shadows over me

a prisoner of uncertainty
they've locked me in chains
why won’t they let me be?

dragged by unseen enemies
tied to a runaway train
there are shadows over me

illusions, perhaps, they may be
I have fought, always in vain
why won’t they let me be?

free me from this misery
somebody, take away the pain
there are shadows over me
why won’t they let me be?

~~
R.S. Mallari
from Poems about Life

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

R.S. Mallari biography

War / John Le Gay Brereton

War

                                      I. 

The beast exultant spreads the nostril wide,
     Snuffing a sickly hate-enkindling scent;
     Proud of his rage, on sudden carnage bent,
He leaps, and flings the helpless guard aside.
Again, again the hills are gapped and dyed,
     Again the hearts of waiting women spent.
     Is there no cooler pathway to content?
Can we not heal the insanity of pride?

Silence the crackle and thunder of battling guns,
     And drive your men to strategy of peace;
          Crush ere its birth the hell-begotten crime;
Still there’s a war that no true warrior shuns,
     That knows no mercy, looks for no surcease,
          But ghastlier battles, victories more sublime.


                                     II.

Envy has slid in silence to its hole,
     And Peace is basking where the workers meet,
     And fire has purged the fever of the street
Where raucous tradesmen grinned and gave and stole.
Yet louder now the tides of battle roll,
     With cheer or sob of charge or stern retreat,
     And sullen thud and rumble of cannon beat
About the heights and passes of the soul.

Not only that amid the hush we hear
     The sounds that once were blurred by market cries,
          Or classes wrangling in affairs of state:
But forces now set free from sordid fear
     No longer work as Mammon’s murdering spies,
          But storm the very citadels of hate.

~~
John Le Gay Brereton (1871-1933)
from The Burning Marl, 1919

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

John Le Gay Brereton biography

Gethsemane / Rudyard Kipling

Gethsemane

The Garden called Gethsemane
   In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
   The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass — we used to pass
   Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
   Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
   It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
   I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
   The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
   I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn’t pass — it didn’t pass —
   It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
   Beyond Gethsemane.

~~
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
from The Years Between, 1919

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

Rudaryd Kipling biography

The Ancient Game / Alfred Gordon

The Ancient Game

The chess-board of the world is set for war:
The kings, that take, but may not taken be;
The queens, unprized in this hostility;
The fortress-castles in the corners four;
The cringing bishops, state-bound to the core;
The inglorious knights of trade and usury –
But at the front of this great panoply
The pawns are ranged to pay the sordid score.

By tortuous juggling, in the name of right,
The marshalled forces to the field are led;
But as they grapple in the sanguine fight,
The arch-intriguers' blood is never shed,
The pieces on the board stand, black and white –
The pawns lie scattered, black and white both red.

~~
Alfred Gordon (1888-1959)
from In Prophecy, and Sonnets of the European war, 1914

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

Alfred Gordon biography