Johan Wolfgang von Goethe - August 28

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832

Calm At Sea
                              
Silence deep rules o'er the waters,
Calmly slumb'ring lies the main,
While the sailor views with trouble
Nought but one vast level plain.

Not a zephyr is in motion!
Silence fearful as the grave!
In the mighty waste of ocean
Sunk to rest is ev'ry wave.




May

Light and silv'ry cloudlets hover
In the air, as yet scarce warm;
Mild, with glimmer soft tinged over,
Peeps the sun through fragrant balm.

Gently rolls and heaves the ocean
As its waves the bank o'erflow.
And with restless motion
Moves the verdure to and fro,

Mirror'd brightly far below.
What is now the foliage moving?
Air is still, and hush'd the breeze,
Sultriness, this fullness loving,

Through the thicket, from the trees.
Now the eye at once gleams brightly,
See! the infant band with mirth
Moves and dances nimbly, lightly,
As the morning gave it birth,
Flutt'ring two and two o'er earth.




The Violet


A violet in the meadow grew,
Bowed to earth, and hid from view:
It was a dear sweet violet.
Along came a young shepherdess
Free of heart, and light of step,
Came by, came by,
Singing, through the flowers.

Oh! Thought the violet, were I,
If only for a little while,
Nature’s sweetest flower yet,
Till my Beloved picked me, pressed
Me fainting, dying to her breast!
So I might lie,
There, for but an hour!

Alas! Alas! The girl went past:
Unseen the violet in the grass,
Was crushed, poor violet. 
It drooped and died, and yet it cried:
‘And though I die, yet still I die
By her, by her,
By her feet passing by.’






The Artist’s Evening Song


Oh, for some inner creative force
Through my mind, echoing!
That through my hands might course
A sap-filled blossoming.

I only shudder, I only stutter, 
And yet can’t halt: at last,
I feel I know you, Nature,
And must hold you fast.

When I think how all these years
My powers have been growing,
And where barren heath appeared
Now streams of joy are flowing:

How I yearn for you, Nature, then,
And long for you, with faith and love!
For me you’ll be the leaping fountain,
A thousand springs will hurl above.

And every single power
In my mind you’ll heighten,
And this narrow being-here
To Eternity you’ll widen.




To The Moon (Final Version)

Bushes, valleys, silently,
You fill with misty light,
Easing my soul utterly
Again, at last, at night:

Soothingly you cast your gaze
Over a dark country,
As gentle and friendly eyes
Guard my destiny. 

Glad, and troubled, times
Echo in my heart,
I walk between pain and delight,
In solitude, apart. 

Flow on, beloved flood: flow on!
I’ll never know joy again,
Laughter and kisses, both are gone,
And loyalty flows away.

There was a time I had as yet
Life’s most precious thing!
Ah, a man can never forget
That which torments him!

River, through the valley, murmur,
Without rest or peace,
For my singing, gently whisper,
Murmuring melodies,

When you rage on winter nights
And then overflow,
Or when around the Spring’s delights
Of bursting buds, you go.

Happy are we if, without hate,
Hidden from the world,
We hold a friend to our heart
And with him explore

What, unknown to all their art,
Ignored, by all mankind,
Through the labyrinth of the heart
Wanders in the night.





--Cat

August 8 - Sara Teasdale

Reposted, because I love her poems

Originally posted Wednesday, August 08, 2007

  

Sara Teasdale August 8, 1884- January 29, 1933

American lyric poet, born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her delicate, personal poetry often deals with love, death, disillusionment, and also the beauties of the natural world. She ended her life by suicide at the age of 48.

Some of Sara Teasdale's poems:

Longing

I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.

I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.


Immortal

So soon my body will have gone
Beyond the sound and sight of men,
And tho' it wakes and suffers now,
Its sleep will be unbroken then;
But oh, my frail immortal soul
That will not sleep forevermore,
A leaf borne onward by the blast,
A wave that never finds the shore.


If Death Is Kind

Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.

We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.


Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things;
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell;
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And, for the Spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Give all you have for loveliness;
Buy it, and never count the cost!
For one white, singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost;
And for a breath of ecstasy,
Give all you have been, or could be.


At Midnight

Now at last I have come to see what life is,
Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun,
And the brave victories that seem so splendid
Are never really won.

Even love that I built my spirit's house for,
Comes like a brooding and a baffled guest,
And music and men's praise and even laughter
Are not so good as rest.


-- Cat

July poets -2

Gerard Manley Hopkins  July 28, 1844 – June 8, 1889

Binsey Poplars 
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
               
(Felled 1879)

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
          Of a fresh and following folded rank
                    Not spared, not one
                    That dandled a sandalled
               Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering
          weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
          When we delve or hew-
Hack and rack the growing green!
          Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will made no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
               To mend her we end her,
          When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
          Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
               Strokes of havoc unselve
          The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.


  
                               
Inversnaid
by Gerard Manley Hopkins 
   
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown, 
His rollrock highroad roaring down, 
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam 
Flutes and low to the lake falls home. 
 
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth         
Turns and twindles over the broth 
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, 
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. 
 
Degged with dew, dappled with dew 
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, 
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. 
 
What would the world be, once bereft 
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, 
O let them be left, wildness and wet;         
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Emma Lazarus July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887 

Dreams 
by Emma Lazarus  
     
A DREAM of lilies: all the blooming earth,
A garden full of fairies and of flowers;
Its only music the glad cry of mirth,
While the warm sun weaves golden-tissued hours;
Hope a bright angel, beautiful and true
As Truth herself, and life a lovely toy,
Which ne'er will weary us, ne'er break, a new
Eternal source of pleasure and of joy.

A dream of roses: vision of Loves tree,
Of beauty and of madness, and as bright
As naught on earth save only dreams can be,
Made fair and odorous with flower and light;
A dream that Love is strong to outlast Time,
That hearts are stronger than forgetfulness,
The slippery sand than changeful waves that climb,
The wind-blown foam than mighty waters' stress.

A dream of laurels: after much is gone,
Much buried, much lamented, much forgot,
With what remains to do and what is done,
With what yet is, and what, alas! is not,
Man dreams a dream of laurel and of bays,
A dream of crowns and guerdons and rewards,
Wherein sounds sweet the hollow voice of praise,
And bright appears the wreath that it awards.

A dream of poppies, sad and true as Truth,—
That all these dreams were dreams of vanity;
And full of bitter penitence and ruth,
In his last dream, man deems 'twere good to die;
And weeping o'er the visions vain of yore,
In the sad vigils he doth nightly keep,
He dreams it may be good to dream no more,
And life has nothing like Death's dreamless sleep.




The New Colossus 
by Emma Lazarus
                              

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond  July 19, 1902 - May 13, 1962

Discovery 
by ASJ Tessimond )

Discovery
When you are slightly drunk
Things are so close, so friendly.
The road asks to be walked upon,
The road rewards you for walking
With firm upward contact answering your downward contact
Like the pressure of a hand in yours.
You think - this studious balancing
Of right leg while left leg advances, of left while right,
How splendid
Like somebody-or-other-on-a-peak-in-Darien!
How cleverly that seat shapes the body of the girl who sits there.
How well, how skilfully that man there walks towards you,
Arms hanging, swinging, waiting.
You move the muscles of your cheeks,
How cunningly a smile responds.
And now you are actually speaking
Round sounding words
Magnificent
As that lady's hat!



Music
by ASJ Tessimond
 
This shape without space,
This pattern without stuff,
This stream without dimension
Surrounds us, flows through us,
But leaves no mark.

This message without meaning,
These tears without eyes
This laughter without lips
Speaks to us but does not
Disclose its clue.

These waves without sea
Surge over us, smooth us.
These hands without fingers
Close-hold us, caress us.
These wings without birds
Strong-lift us, would carry us
If only the one thread broke.


--Cat

July birthday poets

Hilaire Belloc  July 27, 1870 - July 16, 1953

 

An Author’s Hope
by Hilaire Belloc
            
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
‘His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.’




Drinking Song, On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine
by Hilaire Belloc

My jolly fat host with your face all a-grin,
Come, open the door to us, let us come in.
A score of stout fellows who think it no sin
If they toast till they're hoarse, and drink till they spin,
Hoofed it amain
Rain or no rain,
To crack your old jokes, and your bottle to drain.

Such a warmth in the belly that nectar begets
As soon as his guts with its humour he wets,
The miser his gold, and the student his debts,
And the beggar his rags and his hunger forgets.
For there's never a wine
Like this tipple of thine
From the great hill of Nuits to the River of Rhine.

Outside you may hear the great gusts as they go
By Foy, by Duerne, and the hills of Lerraulx,
But the rain he may rain, and the wind he mayblow,
If the Devil's above there's good liquor below.
So it abound,
Pass it around,
Burgundy's Burgundy all the year round.

                 



|

Emily Jane Brontë July 30, 1818 - December 19, 1848

A Little Budding Rose
by Emily Jane Brontë

                                

It was a little budding rose,
Round like a fairy globe,
And shyly did its leaves unclose
Hid in their mossy robe,
But sweet was the slight and spicy smell
It breathed from its heart invisible.

The rose is blasted, withered, blighted,
Its root has felt a worm,
And like a heart beloved and slighted,
Failed, faded, shrunk its form.
Bud of beauty, bonnie flower,
I stole thee from thy natal bower.

I was the worm that withered thee,
Thy tears of dew all fell for me;
Leaf and stalk and rose are gone,
Exile earth they died upon.
Yes, that last breath of balmy scent
With alien breezes sadly blent!





Mild the mist upon the hill
by Emily Jane Brontë
                                                        
Mild the mist upon the hill
Telling not of storms tomorrow;
No, the day has wept its fill,
Spent its store of silent sorrow.

O, I'm gone back to the days of youth,
I am a child once more,
And 'neath my father's sheltering roof
And near the old hall door

I watch this cloudy evening fall
After a day of rain;
Blue mists, sweet mists of summer pall
The horizon's mountain chain.

The damp stands on the long green grass
As thick as morning's tears,
And dreamy scents of fragrance pass
That breathe of other years.

Robert Graves  July 24, 1895 - dec 7, 1985

A Slice Of Wedding Cake 
by Robert Graves

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.

Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).

Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.

Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.





Full Moon 
by Robert Graves 

As I walked out one harvestnight
About the stroke of One,
The Moon attained to her full height
Stood beaming like the Sun.
She exorcised the ghostly wheat
To mute assent in Love's defeat
Whose tryst had now begun.

The fields lay sick beneath my tread,
A tedious owlet cried;
The nightingale above my head
With this or that replied,
Like man and wife who nightly keep
Inconsequent debate in sleep
As they dream side by side.

Your phantom wore the moon's cold mask,
My phantom wore the same,
Forgetful of the feverish task
In hope of which they came,
Each image held the other's eyes
And watched a grey distraction rise
To cloud the eager flame.

To cloud the eager flame of love,
To fog the shining gate:
They held the tyrannous queen above
Sole mover of their fate,
They glared as marble statues glare
Across the tessellated stair
Or down the Halls of State.

And now cold earth was Arctic sea,
Each breath came dagger keen,
Two bergs of glinting ice were we,
The broad moon sailed between;
There swam the mermaids, tailed and finned,
And Love went by upon the wind
As though it had not been. 


--Cat          

Cacoethes Scribendi

An incurable itch for scribbling [cacoethes scribendi] takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breast.
—Juvenal





Cacoethes Scribendi 
by Oliver Wendell Holmes 

August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894



If all the trees in all the woods were men;
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea
Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes

Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,
And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
The human race should write, and write, and write,

Till all the pens and paper were used up,
And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink
Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.


--Cat

Spring poems

William Morris
March 24, 1834 -- October 3, 1896


Spring's Bedfellow


Spring went about the woods to-day,
The soft-foot winter-thief,
And found where idle sorrow lay
’Twixt flower and faded leaf.
She looked on him, and found him fair
For all she had been told;
She knelt adown beside him there,
And sang of days of old.

His open eyes beheld her nought,
Yet ’gan his lips to move;
But life and deeds were in her thought,
And he would sing of love.

So sang they till their eyes did meet,
And faded fear and shame;
More bold he grew, and she more sweet,
Until they sang the same.

Until, say they who know the thing,
Their very lips did kiss,
And Sorrow laid abed with Spring
Begat an earthly bliss.

 

 


Robert Frost
March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963

 
A Prayer in Spring

 
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

 




Emily Dickinson
December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886


A light exists in spring


A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
 When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
 On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
 But human naturefeels.

It waits upon the lawn;
 It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
 It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
 Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
 It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
 Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
 Upon a sacrament.


 


William Shakespeare
April 26, 1564 (baptized) –  April 23, 1616


Spring


When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
'Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!' O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
'Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!' O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.


 


 
Claude McKay
September 15, 1889 – May 22, 1948


Spring in New Hampshire


Too green the springing April grass,
Too blue the silver-speckled sky,
For me to linger here, alas,
While happy winds go laughing by,
Wasting the golden hours indoors,
Washing windows and scrubbing floors.

Too wonderful the April night,
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,
The stars too gloriously bright,
For me to spend the evening hours,
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.


 


Lucy Maud Montgomery
November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942


Spring Song


Hark, I hear a robin calling!
List, the wind is from the south!
And the orchard-bloom is falling
Sweet as kisses on the mouth.

In the dreamy vale of beeches
Fair and faint is woven mist,
And the river's orient reaches
Are the palest amethyst.

Every limpid brook is singing
Of the lure of April days;
Every piney glen is ringing
With the maddest roundelays.

Come and let us seek together
Springtime lore of daffodils,
Giving to the golden weather
Greeting on the sun-warm hills.

Ours shall be the moonrise stealing
Through the birches ivory-white;
Ours shall be the mystic healing
Of the velvet-footed night.

Ours shall be the gypsy winding
Of the path with violets blue,
Ours at last the wizard finding
Of the land where dreams come true.


 --Cat  --Happy Spring

December Poems 2

Christopher Pearse Cranch 
March 8, 1813 -- January 20, 1892


December

No more the scarlet maples flash and burn
Their beacon-fires from hilltop and from plain;
The meadow-grasses and the woodland fern
In the bleak woods lie withered once again.

The trees stand bare, and bare each stony scar
Upon the cliffs; half frozen glide the rills;
The steel-blue river like a scimitar
Lies cold and curved between the dusky hills.

Over the upland farm I take my walk,
And miss the flaunting flocks of golden-rod;
Each autumn flower a dry and leafless stalk,
Each Mossy field a track of frozen sod.

I hear no more the robin's summer song
Through the gray network of the wintry woods;
Only the cawing crows that all day long
Clamor about the windy solitudes.

Like agate stones upon earth's frozen breast,
The little pools of ice lie round and still;
While sullen clouds shut downward east and west
In marble ridges stretched from hill to hill.

Come once again, O southern wind,-once more
Come with they wet wings flapping at my pane;
Ere snow-drifts pile their mounds about my door,
One parting dream of summer bring again.

Ah, no! I hear the windows rattle fast;
I see the first flakes of the gathering snow,
That dance and whirl before the northern blast.
No countermand the march of days can know.

December drops no weak, relenting tear,
By our fond summer sympathies ensnared;
Nor from the perfect circle of the year
Can even winter's crystal gems be spared.




Helen Hunt Jackson  
October 18, 1830 –  August 12, 1885


A Calendar of Sonnets: December

The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes
Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed:
Far fairer than when placidly it streamed,
The brook its frozen architecture makes,
And under bridges white its swift way takes.
Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed
Might linger on the road; or one who deemed
His message hostile gently for their sakes
Who listened might reveal it by degrees.
We gird against the cold of winter wind
Our loins now with mighty bands of sleep,
In longest, darkest nights take rest and ease,
And every shortening day, as shadows creep
O'er the brief noontide, fresh surprises find.




Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell  
September 7, 1887 -  December 9, 1964


When Cold December

When cold December
Froze to grisamber
The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees--
Then fading slow
And furred is the snow
As the almond's sweet husk--
And smelling like musk.
The snow amygdaline
Under the eglantine
Where the bristling stars shine
Like a gilt porcupine--
The snow confesses
The little Princesses
On their small chioppines
Dance under the orpines.
See the casuistries
Of their slant fluttering eyes--
Gilt as the zodiac
(Dancing Herodiac).
Only the snow slides
Like gilded myrrh--
From the rose-branches--hides
Rose-roots that stir.



William Cullen Bryant  
November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878 


The Twenty-Second Of December

Wild was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New-England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.

They little thought how pure a light,
With years, should gather round that day;
How love should keep their memories bright,
How wide a realm their sons should sway.

Green are their bays; but greener still
Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed,
And regions, now untrod, shall thrill
With reverence when their names are breathed.

Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,
The children of the pilgrim sires
This hallowed day like us shall keep.




Anna Seward  
December 12, 1747 – March 25, 1809


December Morning

I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter's pale dawn; and as warm fires illume,
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Through misty windows bend the musing sight
Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters closed, peer faintly through the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon gray spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given. Then to decree
The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold
To friendship or the Muse, or seek with glee
Wisdom's rich page. Oh, hours more worth than gold
By whose blest use we lengthen life, and, free
From drear decays of age, outlive the old.




Robert Fuller Murray  
December 26,1863 - 1894
 

A December Day

Blue, blue is the sea to-day,
Warmly the light
Sleeps on St. Andrews Bay --
Blue, fringed with white.

That's no December sky!
Surely 'tis June
Holds now her state on high,
Queen of the noon.

Only the tree-tops bare
Crowning the hill,
Clear-cut in perfect air,
Warn us that still

Winter, the aged chief,
Mighty in power,
Exiles the tender leaf,
Exiles the flower.

Is there a heart to-day,
A heart that grieves
For flowers that fade away,
For fallen leaves?

Oh, not in leaves or flowers
Endures the charm
That clothes those naked towers
With love-light warm.

O dear St. Andrews Bay,
Winter or Spring
Gives not nor takes away
Memories that cling

All round thy girdling reefs,
That walk thy shore,
Memories of joys and griefs
Ours evermore.


    
Ina D. Coolbrith
March 10, 1841 – February 29, 1928


December

Now the Summer all is over!
We have wandered through the clover,
We Have plucked in wood and lea
Blue-bell and anemone.

We were children of the Sun,
Very brown to look upon;
We were stained, hands and lips,
With the berries’ juicy tips.

And I think that we may know
Where the rankest nettles grow,
And where oak and ivy weave
Crimson glories to deceive.

Now the merry days are over!
Woodland-tenants seek their cover,
And the swallow leaves again
For his castle-nests in Spain.

Shut the door, and close the blind:
We shall have the bitter wind,
We shall have the dreary rain
Striving, driving at the pane.

Send the ruddy fire-light higher;
Draw your easy chair up nigher;
Through the winter, bleak and chill,
We may have our summer still.

Here are poems we may read—
Pleasant fancies to our need.
Ah, eternal Summer-time,
Dwells within the Poet’s rhyme!

All the birds’ sweet melodies
Linger in these songs of his;
And the blossoms of all ages
Waft their fragrance from his pages.




--Cat

December Poems

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
October 21, 1772 -- July 25, 1834


Come, come thou bleak December wind (fragment)

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.




     
Percy Bysshe Shelley

August 4, 1792 -- July 8, 1822


Song. Cold, Cold Is The Blast When December Is Howling

Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow,--
Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;
But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,
More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,
More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,
Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow--

And ah! poor — has felt all this horror,
Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:
‘Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,
She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate--
Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,
He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,
She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
Crossed the dark mountain side, though the hour it was late.
'Twas on the wild height of the dark Penmanmawr,
That the form of the wasted -- reclined;
She shrieked to the ravens that croaked from afar,
And she sighed to the gusts of the wild sweeping wind.--
I call not yon rocks where the thunder peals rattle,
I call not yon clouds where the elements battle,
But thee, cruel -- I call thee unkind!'--

Then she wreathed in her hair the wild flowers of the mountain,
And deliriously laughing, a garland entwined,
She bedewed it with tears, then she hung o'er the fountain,
And leaving it, cast it a prey to the wind.
'Ah! go,' she exclaimed, 'when the tempest is yelling,
'Tis unkind to be cast on the sea that is swelling,
But I left, a pitiless outcast, my dwelling,
My garments are torn, so they say is my mind--'

Not long lived --, but over her grave
Waved the desolate form of a storm-blasted yew,
Around it no demons or ghosts dare to rave,
But spirits of peace steep her slumbers in dew.
Then stay thy swift steps mid the dark mountain heather,
Though chill blow the wind and severe is the weather,
For perfidy, traveller! cannot bereave her,
Of the tears, to the tombs of the innocent due.--

JULY, 1810.





John Keats
October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821


In Drear-Nighted December

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.





Robert Southey
August 12, 1774 -- March 21, 1843


Ode Written On The First Of December

Tho' now no more the musing ear
Delights to listen to the breeze
That lingers o'er the green wood shade,
 I love thee Winter! well.

Sweet are the harmonies of Spring,
Sweet is the summer's evening gale,
Pleasant the autumnal winds that shake
 The many-colour'd grove.

And pleasant to the sober'd soul
The silence of the wintry scene,
When Nature shrouds her in her trance

Not undelightful now to roam
The wild heath sparkling on the sight;
Not undelightful now to pace
 The forest's ample rounds;

And see the spangled branches shine,
And mark the moss of many a hue
That varies the old tree's brown bark,
 Or o'er the grey stone spreads.

The cluster'd berries claim the eye
O'er the bright hollies gay green leaves,
The ivy round the leafless oak
 Clasps its full foliage close.

So VIRTUE diffident of strength
Clings to RELIGION'S firmer aid,
And by RELIGION'S aid upheld
 Endures calamity.

Nor void of beauties now the spring,
Whose waters hid from summer sun
Have sooth'd the thirsty pilgrim's ear
 With more than melody.

The green moss shines with icey glare,
The long grass bends its spear-like form,
And lovely is the silvery scene
 When faint the sunbeams smile.

Reflection too may love the hour
When Nature, hid in Winter's grave,
No more expands the bursting bud
 Or bids the flowret bloom.

For Nature soon in Spring's best charms
Shall rise reviv'd from Winter's grave.
Again expand the bursting bud,
 And bid the flowret bloom.


     



Hilaire Belloc  
July 27, 1870 –  July 16, 1953


[Month of] December

Hoar Time about the house betakes him slow,
Seeking an entry for his weariness.
And in that dreadful company distress
And the sad night with silent footsteps go.
On my poor fire the brands are scarce aglow,
And in the woods without what memories press
Where, waning in the trees from less to less,
Mysterious bangs the hom6d moon and low.

For now December, full of aged care,
Comes in upon the yea and weakly grieves;
Mumbling his lost desires and his despair; .
And with mad trembling hand still interweaves,
The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair,
While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.






William Stanley Merwin 
September 30, 1927


December Night

The cold slope is standing in darkness
But the south of the trees is dry to the touch

The heavy limbs climb into the moonlight bearing feathers
I came to watch these
White plants older at night
The oldest
Come first to the ruins

And I hear magpies kept awake by the moon
The water flows through its
Own fingers without end

Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for men



    


John Clare  
July 13, 1793 – May 20, 1864


December

While snow the window-panes bedim,
The fire curls up a sunny charm,
Where, creaming o'er the pitcher's rim,
The flowering ale is set to warm;
Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,
Sits there, its pleasures to impart,
And children, 'tween their parent's knees,
Sing scraps of carols o'er by heart.

And some, to view the winter weathers,
Climb up the window-seat with glee,
Likening the snow to falling feathers,
In fancy infant ecstasy;
Laughing, with superstitious love,
O'er visions wild that youth supplies,
Of people pulling geese above,
And keeping Christmas in the skies.

As tho' the homestead trees were drest,
In lieu of snow, with dancing leaves,
As tho' the sun-dried martin's nest,
Instead of ickles, hung the eaves,
The children hail the happy day -
As if the snow were April's grass,
And pleas'd, as 'neath the warmth of May,
Sport o'er the water froze as glass.



--Cat