Ancient Music / Ezra Pound

Jazz Guy, Blizzard Day in NYC, 2010. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

Ancient Music

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
        Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.

Freezeth river, turneth liver,
        Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
        So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

~~
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
From Blast! 2, July 1915

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

See also: Cuckoo Song (Sumer is icumen in)

Ezra Pound biography

"Ancient Music" read by Allen Davis Drake. Courtesy AudioBooks.

January / H. Cordelia Ray

from The Procession of the Seasons

January

To herald in another year,
        With rhythmic note the snowflakes fall
Silently from their crystal courts,
        To answer Winter's call.
Wake, mortal! Time is winged anew!
        Call Love and Hope and Faith to fill
The chambers of thy soul to-day;
        Life hath its blessings still!

~~
H. Cordelia Ray (1852-1916)
from Poems, 1910

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[February]

H. Cordelia Ray biography

Olga 1969, Porvoo, Finland,, Old City in January, 2016. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Winter Sketch, Rockcliffe, Ottawa / Anne Wilkinson

Winter Sketch, Rockcliffe, Ottawa

Down domestic roads the snow plough, snorting
Stacks a crop of winter, spills it high
To hedgerows alped with lilies; in the valley
White is wag, is daisy till
The sun aloft and hot with husbandry
Beheads the flowers.

Behind the plough the cold air flies a spume
As soft and adamant as swans
Where snow’s vacation is to etherize
The wood and choke the town’s
Hard arteries with drifts of chloroform.
And all the long excessive day the ploughman
Steers his dreaming over the hill
To the faraway hour that carries his frostbite home.

Such storm of white
Bound by the black extravagance of night
Makes winding sheet our myth-told-many-a-bed-time tale
Till April babble swells the shroud to breast
So milky full the whole north swills, licking
A world of sugar from encrusted nipples
Springful and swollen with love.

And tusked with icicles, the houses here
Bog stuporous in slow white sand, guard
Their docile lawns with walls that boast
Immaculate conception in a cloud
Made big by polar ghost.
In suburb of the forest, men walk shy,
Dismembered by two worlds;
Only the uncurled ears of children hear
The coyotes mating in a neighbour’s acre,
Theirs the only hands whose thumbs work free
To sculpt a tower leaning tipsy with unPisan laughter;
And being young, flexible pink tongues

Rename a carrot, nose;
Nose on hump of snow they crystal christen
Christ, the stillborn man;
Then herd their feet to kick the undefiled
When eyes still whey with vision see
That chastity, though white, is wormed with sleep
.
O watch the child lie down and lusty swing
His arms to angel in his image, sing
“I dare the snow my wings to keep.”

~~
Anne Wilkinson (1910-1961)
from Counterpoint to Sleep, 1951

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Anne Wilkinson biography

Earl Andrew, Houses on Rockcliffe Way, Ottawa, 2021. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

A Winter Day / Lucy Maud Montgomery

A Winter Day

I

The air is silent save where stirs
A bugling breeze among the firs;
The virgin world in white array
Waits for the bridegroom kiss of day;
All heaven blooms rarely in the east
Where skies are silvery and fleeced,
And o'er the orient hills made glad
The morning comes in wonder clad;
Oh, 'tis a time most fit to see
How beautiful the dawn can be!


II

Wide, sparkling fields snow-vestured lie
Beneath a blue, unshadowed sky;
A glistening splendor crowns the woods
And bosky, whistling solitudes;
In hemlock glen and reedy mere
The tang of frost is sharp and clear;
Life hath a jollity and zest,
A poignancy made manifest;
Laughter and courage have their way
At noontide of a winter's day.


III

Faint music rings in wold and dell,
The tinkling of a distant bell,
Where homestead lights with friendly glow
Glimmer across the drifted snow;
Beyond a valley dim and far
Lit by an occidental star,
Tall pines the marge of day beset
Like many a slender minaret,
Whence priest-like winds on crystal air
Summon the reverent world to prayer.

~~
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)
from The Watchman, and other poems, 1916

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

Lucy Maud Montgomery biography

"A Winter Day" by Lucy Maud Montgomery, LibriVox audiobook

The Winter Scene (I-II) / Bliss Carman

The Winter Scene

I

The rutted roads are all like iron; skies
Are keen and brilliant; only the oak-leaves cling
In the bare woods, or the hardy bitter-sweet;
Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on;
And all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice
That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick,
Or in the twilight cracks with running whoop.
Bring in the logs of oak and hickory,
And make an ample blaze on the wide hearth.
Now is the time, with winter o'er the world,
For books and friends and yellow candle-light,
And timeless lingering by the settling fire.
While all the shuddering stars are keen with cold.

"Winter Scenes Prelude & I: Shuddering Stars," composed by Donald Skirvin

II

Out from the silent portal of the hours,

When frosts are come and all the hosts put on.

Their burnished gear to march across the night

And o'er a darkened earth in splendor shine,

Slowly above the world Orion wheels

His glittering square, while on the shadowy hill

And throbbing like a sea-light through the dusk,

Great Sirius rises in his flashing blue.

Lord of the winter night, august and pure,

Returning year on year untouched by time,

To hearten faith with thine unfaltering fire,

There are no hurts that beauty cannot ease,

No ills that love cannot at last repair,

In the victorious progress of the soul.

~~

Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

from Sanctuary: Sunshine House sonnets, 1929

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

[The Winter Scene III-IV]

Bliss Carman biography

"Winter Scenes II: Unfaltering Fire," composed by Donald Skirvin

The Winter Scene (III-IV) / Bliss Carman

The Winter Scene

III

Russet and white and gray is the oak wood
In the great snow. Still from the North it comes,
Whispering, settling, sifting through the trees,
O'erloading branch and twig. The road is lost.
Clearing and meadow, stream and ice-bound pond
Are made once more a trackless wilderness
In the white hush where not a creature stirs;
And the pale sun is blotted from the sky.
In that strange twilight the lone traveller halts
To listen to the stealthy snowflakes fall.
And then far off toward the Stamford shore,
Where through the storm the coastwise liners go,
Faint and recurrent on the muffled air,
A foghorn booming through the smother – hark!

"Winter Scenes III: Strange Twilight," composed by Donald Skirvin

IV

When the day changed and the mad wind died down,
The powdery drifts that all day long had blown
Across the meadows and the open fields,
Or whirled like diamond dust in the bright sun,
Settled to rest, and for a tranquil hour
The lengthening bluish shadows on the snow
Stole down the orchard slope, and a rose light
Flooded the earth with beauty and with peace.
Then in the west behind the cedars black
The sinking sun stained red the winter dusk
With sullen flare upon the snowy ridge,--
As in a masterpiece by Hokusai,
Where on a background gray, with flaming breath
A scarlet dragon dies in dusky gold.

~~
Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
from Sanctuary: Sunshine House sonnets, 1929

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

[The Winter Scene I-II]

Bliss Carman biography

"Winter Scenes IV: "Dusky Gold", composed by Donald Skirvin

Winter / Walter de la Mare [1916]

 

Winter

        Clouded with snow
        The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
        Alone sings now.

        The rayless sun,
        Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
        Unearthly white.

        Thick draws the dark,
        And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
        Floats the white moon.

~~

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

from The Listeners, and other poems, 1916

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

Walter de la Mere biography

"Winter" read for Waggle Woods.