A Song of Winter / Emily Pfeiffer

A Song of Winter

Barbed blossom of the guarded gorse,
    I love thee where I see thee shine:
Thou sweetener of our common-ways,
    And brightener of our wintry days.

Flower of the gorse, the rose is dead,
    Thou art undying, O be mine!
Be mine with all thy thorns, and prest
    Close on a heart that asks not rest.

I pluck thee and thy stigma set
    Upon my breast and on my brow,
Blow, buds, and plenish so my wreath
    That none may know the wounds beneath.

O thorny crown of burning gold,
    No festal coronal art thou;
Thy honeyed blossoms are but hives
    That guard the growth of wingëd lives.

I saw thee in the time of flowers
    As sunshine spilled upon the land,
Or burning bushes all ablaze
    With sacred fire; but went my ways;

I went my ways, and as I went
    Plucked kindlier blooms on either hand;
Now of those blooms so passing sweet
    None lives to stay my passing feet.

And yet thy lamp upon the hill
    Feeds on the autumn's dying sigh,
And from thy midst comes murmuring
A music sweeter than in spring.

Barbed blossom of the guarded gorse,
    Be mine to wear until I die,
And mine the wounds of love which still
    Bear witness to his human will.

~~
Emily Pfeiffer (1827-1890)
from Sonnets and Songs, 1880

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Emily Pfeiffer biography

J.J. Hake, Whin or gorse near St. Andrews, Scotland. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Manitoba Childe Roland / Carl Sandburg

Manitoba Childe Roland

Last night a January wind was ripping at the shingles
    over our house and whistling a wolf song under the
    eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl
    the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark
    Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was
    beautiful to her and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and
    nothing happens — and he goes on and on — and it's
    all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on — and nothing happens — and he
    comes on a horse's skull, dry bones of a dead horse —
    and you know more than ever it's all lonesome and
    empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows — he
    fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the empty
    sky and the empty land--and blows one last wonder-
    cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks
    off its results willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick
    of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimetre
    projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts
    of Manitoba and Minnesota — in the sled derby run
    from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg —
    the lead dog is eaten by four team mates — and the
    man goes on and on — running while the other racers
    ride, running while the other racers sleep —

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle
    of travel hour after hour — fighting the dogs who
    dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep —
    pushing on — running and walking five hundred
    miles to the end of the race — almost a winner — one
    toe frozen, feet blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the North-
    west meet him in the finishing miles and yell cheers
    — I know why judges of the race call him a winner
    and give him a special prize even though he is a
    loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding
    heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles that
    one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland — and I told
    the six year old girl about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles
    and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes
    had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful
    to her and she could not understand.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Corhhuskers, 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Lomen Bros., Dogsled team, Nome, Alaska, 1910. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

January / Edwin Arnold

from The Twelve Months

January

Rain — hail — sleet — snow! — Yet, in my East,
This is the time when palm-trees quicken
With flowers, wherefrom the Arabs' feast
Of amber dates will thenceforth thicken.

Palms, — he and she, — in sight they grow;
And o'er the desert-sands is wafted,
On light airs of the After-glow,
That golden dust whence fruit is grafted.

Ah, happy trees! who feel no frost
Of winter-time, to chill your gladness;
And grow not close enough for cost
Of bliss fulfilled, which heightens sadness;

No gray reality's alloy
Your green ideal can diminish!
You have love's kiss, in all its joy
, Without love's lips, which let it finish!

~~

Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)

from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[February]

Edwin Arnold biography

Ahmad Elq, Paul Trees in Saudi Arabia, 2012. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Night Rain / Christopher Mercon

 

Christopher Mercon, 2022. All rights reserved - used with permission.

Photo by Christopher Mercon, 2023. Art by Thee Poetry Posters.

January / James Russell Lowell

from The Vision of Sir Launfal, Part Second:

    I

There was never a leaf on bush or tree,
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly;
The river was dumb and could not speak,
    For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun;
A single crow on the tree-top bleak
    From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun;
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold,
As if her veins were sapless and old,
And she rose up decrepitly
For a last dim look at earth and sea.

~~
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)

(edited by Oscar Faye Adams)
from Through the Year with the Poets, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

James Russell Lowell biography 

The Vision of Sir Launfal, and other poems, read by Phil Champ. 

Courtesy LibriVox and A Good Channel. (Quoted text begins at 42.17) 

To a Thrush Singing in January / John Keble

To a Thrush Singing in the Middle of a Village, Jan. 1883.

Sweet bird! up earliest in the morn,
    Up earliest in the year,
For in the quiet mist are borne
    Thy matins soft and clear.

As linnet soft, and clear as lark,
    Well hast thou ta'en thy part,
Where many an ear thy notes may reach,
    And here and there a heart.

The first snow-wreaths are scarcely gone,
    (They stayed but half a day)
The berries bright hang lingering on;
    Yet thou hast learned thy lay.

One gleam, one gale of western air
    Has hardly brushed thy wing;
Yet thou hast given thy welcome fair,
    Good-morrow to the spring!

Perhaps within thy carol's sound
    Some wakeful mourner lies,
Dim roaming days and years around,
    That ne'er again may rise.

He thanks thee with a tearful eye,
    For thou hast wing'd his spright
Back to some hour when hopes were nigh
    And dearest friends in sight;

That simple, fearless note of thine
    Has pierced the cloud of care,
And lit awhile the gleam divine
    That bless'd his infant prayer;

Ere he had known, his faith to blight,
    The scomer's withering smile;
While hearts, he deem'd, beat true and right,
    Here in our Christian Isle.

That sunny, morning glimpse is gone,
    That morning note is still;
The dun dark day comes lowering on,
    The spoilers roam at will;

Yet calmly rise, and boldly strive;
    The sweet bird's early song,
Ere evening fall shall oft revive,
    And cheer thee all day long.

Are we not sworn to serve our King?
    He sworn with us to be?
The birds that chant before the spring
    Are truer far than we.

~~
John Keble (1792-1866)
from Miscellaneous Poems, 1870

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Keble biography

D. Gordon E. Robertson, Hermit Thrush in Winter, Ottawa, 2011. 

CC BY-SA 3.0, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

See also: The Darkling Thrush / Thomas Hardy

We Like the Winter and its Snows / James Berry Bensel

Ballade

When we were children we would say, —
    "I like the coming of the Spring,
I like the violets of May,
    I like, why, almost everything
    That March and May and April bring."
But now we value less the rose,
    And care not when the birds take wing.
We like the Winter and its snows.

For Springtime cannot always stay,
    And song-birds do not always sing;
The Summer passes swift away,
    And Autumn tree leaves weakly cling.
    So when we sit here listening
To every fitful wind that blows,
    And see the white land glistening,
We like the Winter and its snows.

Who would not in the fountain's spray
    His heavy cares be glad to fling,
If life were all a summer day
    And green boughs bent for us to swing!
    But roses bear sharp thorns that sting,
And yesterday the fountain froze,
    So while the winds are whistling
We like the Winter and its snows.

Envoi

Prince, you and I are glad to ring
    Our changes on the youth that goes,
And laugh while we are shivering,
    "We like the Winter and its snows."

~~
James Berry Bensel (1856-1886)

from Through the Year with the Poets, 1885

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

James Berry Bensel biography

Hassan Ghaedi, Snowy Day of Tehran, 2007. CC BY 4.0, 

courtesy Fars Media Corporation and Wikimedia Commons.