October's featured poem

  

The Penny Blog's featured poem for October 2022:

Fall, Leaves, Fall, by Emily Brontë

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2012/10/fall-leaves-fall.html

Penny's Top 20 / September 2022

                  

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in September 2022:

  1.  September, Edmund Spenser

  2.  The Dwarf, Wallace Stevens

  3.  September 9, George J. Dance

  4.  O Canada: The land we love, David Pekrul

  5.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  6.  September, Ellen P. Allerton
  7.  A Song for September, Thomas William Parsons

  8.  September, Rebecca Hey
  9.  Autumn's Orchestra, Pauline Johnson

10.  World Trade Center, Julia Vinograd

11.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance
12.  September, Helen L. Smith
13.  2 poems on summer's end, Emily Dickinson
14.  Autumn Regrets, Paul Bewsher
15.  Hockey War, David Pekrul
16.  Skating, William Wordsworth
17.  Autumn, T.E. Hulme

18.  Card Game, Frank Prewett
19.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

20. Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

Source: Blogger, "Stats"  

September / Ellen P. Allerton

September

'Tis autumn in our northern land.
    The summer walks a queen no more;
Her sceptre drops from out her hand;
    Her strength is spent, her passion o'er.
On lake and stream, on field and town,
The placid sun smiles calmly down.

The teeming earth its fruit has borne;
    The grain fields lie all shorn and bare;
And where the serried ranks of corn
    Wave proudly in the summer air,
And bravely tossed their yellow locks,
Now thickly stands the bristling shocks.

On sunny slope, on crannied wall
    The grapes hang purpling in the sun;
Down to the turf the brown nuts fall,
    And golden apples, one by one.
Our bins run o'er with ample store —
Thus autumn reaps what summer bore.

The mill turns by the waterfall;
    The loaded wagons go and come;
All day I hear the teamster's call,
    All day I hear the threshers hum;
And many a shout and many a laugh
Comes breaking through the clouds of chaff.

Gay, careless sounds of homely toil!
    With mirth and labor closely bent
The weary tiller of the soil
    Wins seldom wealth, but oft content.
'Tis better still if he but knows
What sweet, wild beauty round him glows.

The brook glides toward the sleeping lake —
    Now babbling over sinning stones;
Now under clumps of bush and brake,
    Hushing its brawl to murmuring tones;
And now it takes its winding path
Through meadows green with aftermath.

The frosty twilight early falls,
    But household fires burn warm and red.
The cold may creep without the walls,
    And growing things lie stark and dead —
No matter, so the hearth be bright
When household faces meet to-night.

~~
Ellen P. Allerton (1835-1893)
from Annabel, and other poems, 1885

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ellen P. Allerton biography

September / Helen L. Smith

September

O month of fairer, rarer days
    Than Summer's best have been;
When skies at noon are burnished blue,
    And winds at evening keen;
When tangled, tardy-blooming things
    From wild waste places peer,
And drooping golden grain-heads tell
    That harvest-time is near.

Though Autumn tints amid the green
    Are gleaming, here and there,
And spicy Autumn odors float
    Like incense on the air,
And sounds we mark as Autumn's own
    Her nearing steps betray,
In gracious mood she seems to stand
    And bid the Summer stay.

Though 'neath the trees, with fallen leaves
    The sward be lightly strown,
And nests deserted tell the tale
    Of summer bird-folk flown;
Though white with frost the lowlands lie
    When lifts the morning haze,
Still there's a charm in every hour
    Of sweet September days.

~~
Helen L. Smith

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Autumn Regrets / Paul Bewsher

Autumn Regrets

That I were Keats! And with a golden pen
    Could for all time preserve these golden days
In rich and glowing verse, for poorer men,
    Who felt their wonder, but could only gaze
With silent joy upon sweet Autumn's face,
And not record in any wise its grace!
    Alas! But I am even dumb as they –
    I cannot bid the fleeting hours stay,
Nor chain one moment on a page's space.

That I were Grieg! Then, with a haunting air
    Of murmurs soft, and swelling, grand refrains
Would I express my love of Autumn fair
    With all its wealth of harvest, and warm rains:
And with fantastic melodies inspire
A memory of each mad sunset's fire
    In which the day goes slowly to its death
    As through the fragrant woods dim Evening's breath
Doth soothe to sleep the drowsy songbirds' choir.

That I were Corot! Then September's gold
    Would I store up in painted treasuries
That, when the world seemed grey I could behold –
    Its blazing colour with sweet memories,
And each elusive colour would be mine
That decorates these afternoons benign.
    Ah! Then I could enshrine each fleeting hue
    Which dyes the woodland, and enslave the blue
Of sky and haze, with genius divine.

How sad these wishes! When I have no art
    Of poetry, or music, or of brush,
With which to calm the swelling of my heart
    By capturing the misty country's hush
In muted violins; I cannot hymn
The shadowy silence of the copses dim;
    Nor can I paint September's sky-crowned hills.
    Gone then, the wonder which my vision fills,
When all the earth is bound by Winter grim!

~~
Paul Bewsher (1894-1966)
from The Dawn Patrol, and other poems of an aviator, 1917

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

Paul Bewsher biography

September / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

September

Now the Earth yields her strength! The teeming ground
Seems lighten'd of its curse: on every side
The hills rejoice, the valleys far and wide
Stand thick with corn, and harvest-songs resound.
The garden its rich dainties scatters round,
While lane and copse, by Nature only till'd,
An ample store of humbler fruitage yield,
Berries and nuts by Autumn suns embrown'd
But, ah! amid such visions of delight,
Those few rich tints upon the forest boughs,
Like the fine flush, so ominously bright,
Which on her victim's cheek Consumption throws,
Too truly speak of wasting and decay,
And, sighing, I pursue my woodland way.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)
from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[October]

Rebecca Hey biography

World Trade Center / Julia Vinograd

 

World Trade Center

I am an old woman in a black dress

Kneeling in the ruins, clutching my shoulders,

teeth clenched and lips drawn back in a snarl,

rocking back and forth in grief and rage.

I need to tear out my enemy’s throat

for the taste of his lifeblood

is better than strawberries.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Byzantium.

I am kneeling in the ruins of New York.

I am saying the names of my dead children

over and over, as if they were silver bullets

to shoot at God’s smile,

but I want to kill my enemy’s children

more than I want my own children back.

My face is twisted and strong.

People in uniforms want me to stand up

and get out of their way.

I ignore them.

The sky’s a pillar of smoke above me.

There’s a pillar of fire raging inside me.

I clench my shaking old hands into fists.

I need to squeeze my enemy’s throat

more than I need to hold my lover in the sweet and warm.

His body’s in front of me, squashed to a bloody pulp

with fallen metal.

Somebody takes our picture.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Jerusalem.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Ireland.

I am kneeling in the ruins of New York.

I am kneeling in the ruins of Stonehenge

that was a city once.

This was a world once

and I was human once but I’ve forgotten it.

I walk on bloody feet thru war.

Dying soldiers kneel to me

and I smile.

 ~~
Julia Vinograd (1943-2018)
from Voices, 2011

[Licensed under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 3.0 - some rights reserved]

Julia Vinograd biography