Poetry Archives - Mihaela Limberea

Wine of Summer

8th July 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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This is post 78 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

The sun holds all the earth and all the sky
From the gold throne of this midsummer day.
In the soft air the shadow of a sigh
Breathes on the leaves and scarcely makes them sway.
The wood lies silent in the shimmering heat,
Save where the insects make a lazy drone,
And ever and anon from some tree near,
A dove’s enamoured moan,
Or distant rook’s faint cawing harsh and sweet,
Comes dimly floating to my listening ear.

Right in the wood’s deep heart I lay me down,
And look up at the sky between the leaves,
Through delicate lace I see her deep blue gown.
Across a fern a scarlet spider weaves
From branch to branch a slender silver thread,
And hangs there shining in the white sunbeams,
A ruby tremulous on a streak of light.
And high above my head
One spray of honeysuckle sweats and dreams,
With one wild honey-bee for acolyte.

My nest is all untrod and virginal,
And virginal the path that led me here,
For all along the grass grew straight and tall,
And live things rustled in the thicket near:
And briar rose stretched out to sweet briar rose
Wild slender arms, and barred the way to me
With many a flowering arch, rose-pink or white,
As bending carefully.
Leaving unbroken all their blossoming bows,
I passed along, a reverent neophyte.

The air is full of soft imaginings,
They float unseen beneath the hot sunbeams,
Like tired moths on heavy velvet wings.
They droop above my drowsy head like dreams.
The hum of bees, the murmuring of doves.
The soft faint whispering of unnumbered trees.
Mingle with unreal things, and low and deep
From visionary groves,
Imagined lutes make voiceless harmonies.
And false flutes sigh before the gates of sleep.

O rare sweet hour! O cup of golden wine!
The night of these my days is dull and dense,
And stars are few, be this the anodyne!
Of many woes the perfect recompense.
I thought that I had lost for evermore
The sense of this ethereal drunkenness,
This fierce desire to live, to breathe, to be;
But even now, no less
Than in the merry noon that danced before
My tedious night, I taste its ecstasy.

Taste, and remember all the summer days
That lie, like golden reflections in the lake
Of vanished years, unreal but sweet always;
Soft luminous shadows that I may not take
Into my hands again, but still discern
Drifting like gilded ghosts before my eyes.
Beneath the waters of forgotten things.
Sweet with faint memories,

And mellow with old loves that used to burn
Dead summer days ago, like fierce red kings.
And this hour too must die, even now the sun
Droops to the sea, and with untroubled feet
The quiet evening comes: the day is done.
The air that throbbed beneath the passionate heat
Grows calm and cool and virginal again.
The colour fades and sinks to sombre tones.
As when in youthful cheeks a blush grows dim.
Hushed are the monotones
Of doves and bees, and the long flowery lane
Rustles beneath the wind in playful whim.

Gone are the passion and the pulse that beat
With fevered strokes, and gone the unseen things
That clothed the hour with shining raiment meet
To deck enchantments and imaginings.
No joy is here but only neutral peace
And loveless languor and indifference,
And faint remembrance of lost ecstasy.
The darkening shades increase.
My dreams go out like tapers—I must hence.
Far off I hear Night calling to the sea.

Lord Alfred Douglas (1870 – 1945) was an English poet and journalist.

To read more poems, click here.

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In Summer Time

1st July 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Paul Laurence Dunbar

This is post 77 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

When summer time has come, and all
The world is in the magic thrall
Of perfumed airs that lull each sense
To fits of drowsy indolence;
When skies are deepest blue above,
And flow’rs aflush,—then most I love
To start, while early dews are damp,
And wend my way in woodland tramp
Where forests rustle, tree on tree,
And sing their silent songs to me;
Where pathways meet and pathways part,—
To walk with Nature heart by heart,
Till wearied out at last I lie
Where some sweet stream steals singing by
A mossy bank; where violets vie
In color with the summer sky,—
Or take my rod and line and hook,
And wander to some darkling brook,
Where all day long the willows dream,
And idly droop to kiss the stream,
And there to loll from morn till night—
Unheeding nibble, run, or bite—
Just for the joy of being there
And drinking in the summer air,
The summer sounds, and summer sights,
That set a restless mind to rights
When grief and pain and raging doubt
Of men and creeds have worn it out;
The birds’ song and the water’s drone,
The humming bee’s low monotone,
The murmur of the passing breeze,
And all the sounds akin to these,
That make a man in summer time
Feel only fit for rest and rhyme.
Joy springs all radiant in my breast;
Though pauper poor, than king more blest,
The tide beats in my soul so strong
That happiness breaks forth in song,
And rings aloud the welkin blue
With all the songs I ever knew.
O time of rapture! time of song!
How swiftly glide thy days along
Adown the current of the years,
Above the rocks of grief and tears!
‘Tis wealth enough of joy for me
In summer time to simply be.

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

To read more poems, click here.

The Unquiet Grave

10th June 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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This is post 76 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

‘Cold blows the wind to my true love,
And gently drops the rain,
I never had but one sweetheart,
And in greenwood she lies slain.

‘I’ll do as much for my sweetheart
As any young man may;
I’ll sit and mourn all on her grave
For a twelvemonth and a day.’

When the twelvemonth and one day was past,
The ghost began to speak:
‘Why sittest thou here all day on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?’

‘There’s one thing that I want, sweetheart,
There’s one thing that I crave;
And that is a kiss from your lily-white lips –
Then I’ll go from your grave.’

‘My breast it is as cold as clay,
My breath smells earthly strong;
And if you kiss my cold clay lips,
Your days they won’t be long.

‘Go fetch me water from the desert,
And blood from out of a stone;
Go fetch me milk from a fair maid’s breast
That a young man never had known.’

‘O down in yonder grove, sweetheart,
Where you and I would walk,
The first flower that ever I saw
Is withered to a stalk.

‘The stalk is wither’d and dry, sweetheart,
And the flower will never return;
And since I lost my own sweetheart,
What can I do but mourn?

‘When shall we meet again, sweetheart?
When shall we meet again?’
‘When the oaken leaves that fall from the trees
Are green and spring up again,
Are green and spring up again.’

Anonymous

To read more poems, click here.

It sifts from Leaden Sieves

3rd June 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Emily Dickinson

This is post 75 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

*Photo by Claudio Testa on Unsplash edited by me*

It sifts from Leaden Sieves –
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road –

It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain and of Plain —
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again –

It reaches to the Fence –
It wraps it, Rail by Rail,
Till it is lost in Fleeces –
It flings a Crystal Veil

On Stump and Stack – and Stem —
The Summer’s empty Room –
Acres of Seams where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them –

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen, —
Then stills its Artisans – like Ghosts –
Denying they have been –

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was one of the most original American poets. She is considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century, along with Walt Whitman.

To read more poems, click here.

To the Daisy

13th May 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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William Wordsworth

This is post 74 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

In youth from rock to rock I went,
From hill to hill, in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent,
Most pleas’d when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,
My thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly Nature’s love partake
Of thee, sweet Daisy!

                             2

When soothed a while by milder airs,
Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly shades his few grey hairs;
Spring cannot shun thee;
Whole summer fields are thine by right;
And Autumn, melancholy Wight!
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.

In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
Thou greet’st the Traveller in the lane;
If welcome once thou count’st it gain;
Thou art not daunted,
Nor car’st if thou be set at naught;
And oft alone in nooks remote
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.

                             3

Be Violets in their secret mews
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs chuse;
Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;
Thou liv’st with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed by many a claim
The Poet’s darling.

If to a rock from rains he fly,
Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprison’d by hot sunshine lie
Near the green holly,
And wearily at length should fare;
He need but look about, and there
Thou art! a Friend at hand, to scare
His melancholy.

                             4

A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couch’d an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension;
Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;
Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to Thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life, our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.

                             5

When, smitten by the morning ray,
I see thee rise alert and gay,
Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play
With kindred motion:
At dusk, I’ve seldom mark’d thee press
The ground, as if in thankfulness
Without some feeling, more or less,
Of true devotion.

And all day long I number yet,
All seasons through another debt,
Which I wherever thou art met,
To thee am owing;
An instinct call it, a blind sense;
A happy, genial influence,
Coming one knows not how nor whence,
Nor whither going.

                             6

Child of the Year! that round dost run
Thy course, bold lover of the sun,
And cheerful when the day’s begun
As morning Leveret,
Thou long the Poet’s praise shalt gain:
Thou wilt be more belov’d by men
In times to come; thou not in vain
Art Nature’s Favorite.

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

To read more poems, click here.

A Line-storm Song

29th April 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Robert Frost

This is post 73 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea’s return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.

Robert Frost (1874 – 1963) was an American poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, most known for The Road Not Taken (a poem often read during graduation ceremonies), Fire and Ice, Mending Wall, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and Home Burial.

To read more poems, click here.

The Rivals

22nd April 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Mark Van Doren

This is post 72 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

On a night of whirling snow
When every twig and star is dead
There is a house where I can go
And knock and enter and be fed

With fire and wine; and as we grumble
Winter ceases on the panes.
The outer heights of darkness tumble
Down and in upon our brains,

And sitting there so bitter-bright
We build a season of our own—
Of cynic ice and sudden white
Blasts of understanding blown.

Mark Van Doren (1894 – 1972) was an American poet, writer and critic.

To read more poems, click here.

The Earth-Child in the Grass

15th April 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Katherine Mansfield

This is post 71 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

In the very early morning
Long before Dawn time
I lay down in the paddock
And listened to the cold song of the grass.
Between my fingers the green blades,
And the green blades pressed against my body.
“Who is she leaning so heavily upon me?”
Sang the grass.
“Why does she weep on my bosom,
Mingling her tears with the tears of my mystic lover?
Foolish little earth child!
It is not yet time.
One day I shall open my bosom
And you shall slip in—but not weeping.
Then in the early morning
Long before Dawn time
Your lover will lie in the paddock.
Between his fingers the green blades
And the green blades pressed against his body . . .
My song shall not sound cold to him
In my deep wave he will find the wave of your hair
In my strong sweet perfume, the perfume of your kisses.
Long and long he will lie there . . .
Laughing—not weeping.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923) was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement.

To read more poems, click here.

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Spring

8th April 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Louise Imogen Guiney

This is post 70 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

With a difference — Hamlet.

Again the bloom, the northward flight,
The fount freed at its silver height,
And down the deep woods to the lowest,
The fragrant shadows scarred with light.

O inescapable joy of spring!
For thee the world shall leap and sing;
But by her darkened door thou goest
Forever as a spectral thing.

Louise Imogen Guiney (1861 – 1920) was an American poet, essayist and editor.

To read more poems, click here.

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The Things I Love

25th March 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Scottie McKenzie Frasier

This is post 69 of 79 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

A butterfly dancing in the sunlight,
A bird singing to his mate,
The whispering pines,
The restless sea,
The gigantic mountains,
A stately tree,
The rain upon the roof,
The sun at early dawn,
A boy with rod and hook,
The babble of a shady brook,
A woman with her smiling babe,
A man whose eyes are kind and wise,
Youth that is eager and unafraid—
When all is said, I do love best
A little home where love abides,
And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest.

Scottie McKenzie Frasier (1884-1964) was an American teacher, author, and newspaper editor.

To read more poems, click here.

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Mihaela Limberea

Category: Poetry

Wine of Summer

In Summer Time

The Unquiet Grave

It sifts from Leaden Sieves

To the Daisy

A Line-storm Song

The Rivals

The Earth-Child in the Grass

Spring

The Things I Love

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