February Twilight / Sara Teasdale

February Twilight

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see –
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Dark of the Moon, 1926

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

Sara Teasdale biography

"February Twilight" read for The Poets Library.

Self-Criticism in February / Robinson Jeffers

Self-Criticism in February

The bay is not blue but sombre yellow
With wrack from the battered valley, it is speckled with violent foam heads
And tiger-striped with long lovely storm-shadows.
You love this better than the other mask; better eyes than yours
Would feel the equal beauty of the blue.
It is certain you have loved the beauty of storm disproportionately.
But the present time is not pastoral, but founded
On violence, pointed for more massive violence: perhaps it is not
Perversity but need that perceives the storm-beauty.
Well, bite on this: your poems are too full of ghosts and demons,
And people like phantoms – how often life's are –
And passion so strained that the clay mouths go praying for destruction –
Alas, it is not unusual in life;
To every soul at some time. But why insist on it? And now
For the worst fault: you have never mistaken
Demon nor passion nor idealism for the real God.
Then what is most disliked in those verses
Remains most true. Unfortunately. If only you could sing
That God is love, or perhaps that social
Justice will prevail. I can tell lies in prose.

~~
Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
from Such Counsels You Gave to Me, and other poems, 1937 

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Robinson Jeffers biography

Riding on the Ice upon Lake Champlain / Thomas Rowley

Riding on the Ice upon Lake Champlain

The water deep is fast asleep
Beneath this icy band,
So we can pass upon her face,
As on solid land.

When Sol displays his warmer rays
And leaves his southern house,
He'll penetrate this icy plate
And set the water loose.

To our surprise the winds arise
And put it all in motion;
Here waves will run as they have done
On the Atlantic ocean.

The mighty hand that formed the land
And set the seas their bound,
He at his will can hush it still,
As is the solid ground.

Then Boreas sends his freezing winds
Upon our Lake Champlain,
Whose dreadful frost will bind her fast –
So we may ride again.

~~
Thomas Rowley (1721-1796) 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Rowley biography

Chloris in the Snow / William Strode

Chloris in the Snow

I saw fair Chloris walk alone,
When feather'd rain came softly down,
As Jove descending from his Tower
To court her in a silver shower:
The wanton snow flew to her breast,
Like pretty birds into their nest,
But, overcome with whiteness there,
For grief it thaw'd into a tear:
    Thence falling on her garments' hem,
    To deck her, froze into a gem.

~~
William Strode (1600-1645) 
from the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900

(edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch), 1900

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Strode biography

How Do I Love Thee? / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from Sonnets from the Portuguese

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

~~

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

from Poems, 1856

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

About Sonnets from the Portuguese

All poems of Sonnets from the Portuguese

Elizabeth Barrett Browning biography

Valentine's Day on The Penny Blog

Snow / Archibald Lampman

Snow

White are the far-off plains, and white
    The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
    And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
    Falls down scarce audibly.

The road before me smooths and fills
    Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
    Are blotted slowly out;      
The naked trees loom spectrally
    Into the dim white sky.

The meadows and far-sheeted streams
    Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
    The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
    A silence everywhere.

Save when at lonely intervals
    Some farmer’s sleigh, urged on,  
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
    Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
    A sound remote and clear;

The barking of a dog, or call
    To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
    Or barnyard far a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
    Falls, settling soft and slow.  

The evening deepens, and the gray
    Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
    Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,  
    Plod dumbly on, and dream.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Lyrics of Earth, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Snow" composed & sung by Loreena McKennitt. Courtesy autostopowitz 70.

Winter / Raymond Holden

Winter

Drowsily, dreamily, the brown boughs
Mingle and murmur in the breeze
And the little animals drowse
And I wonder they do not freeze,
For nothing moves but is shrill
With the Winter s clinking song
And the snow lies deep and the hill
Gleams where the gusts are strong.
I have come down from the house
Which rests on the reaching snow
To the music of murmuring boughs
In the footless world I know,
And to me the cold is a voice
From earth that would speak to me
And urge me not to rejoice
That I am not beast nor tree;
And to me the warmth of my blood
Is an answer saying, "I hear,"
And so we are understood
And so we have nothing to fear
Though I am a man who dies
And the earth is like dust in the skies.

~~

Raymond Holden (1894-1972)

from Granite and Alabaster, 1922

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

Raymond Holden biography