Moon tonight,
Beloved . . .
When twilight
Has gathered together
The ends
Of her soft robe
And the last bird-call
Has died.
Moon tonight—
Cool as a forgotten dream,
Dearer than lost twilights
Among trees where birds sing
No more.
Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981) was an American artist, writer, and journalist.
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Photo by Evangelina Silina on Unsplash
1
There is a large crowd of young folks
Hurrying down the road;
They are going to have a picnic now,
And spread the news abroad.
2
They are wearing beautiful bouquets,
And carrying bright tin dippers;
New straw hats are waiving high,
And patent leather slippers.
3
Their hats are made of fine chiffon,
And decorated too.
There will be plenty of goodies
For your friends and for you.
4
They will have a big barbecue.
And a lot of other stuff.
They are going to eat and drink
Till everybody puff.
5
They will have cakes and candy by the heaps,
And ice cream pressed in cake;
Peanuts parched fresh and hot,
And a lot of fine milk shakes.
6
They will have fish croquets by the bushels,
And cocoanut jumbles too;
They are going to feed their friends and foes
And have enough for you.
7
They are going to have a big dance
And have a jolly time.
They want to show their handsome looks
Because they look so fine.
8
One barrel or two of lemonade,
Mixed all through with ice;
Lemons cut and thrown therein
Gee! it’s awful nice.
9
Of all the fun and jolities,
And all the places of rest,
Just go to an old picnic ground;
They tell me that’s the best.
Julius C. Wright was an American poet.
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Photo by Muzammil Soorma on Unsplash
The sun is near set
And the tall buildings
Become teeth
Tearing bloodily at the sky’s throat;
The blank wall by my window
Becomes night sky over the marches
When there is no moon, and no wind,
And little fishes splash in the pools.
I had lit my candle to make a song for you,
But I have forgotten it for I am very tired;
And the candle … a yellow moth …
Flutters, flutters,
Deep in my brain.
My song was about, ‘a foreign lady
Who was beautiful and sad,
Who was forsaken, and who died
A thousand years ago.’
But the cracked cup at my elbow,
With dregs of tea in it,
Fixes my tired thought more surely
Than the song I made for you and forgot …
That I might give you this.
I am tired.
I am so tired
That my soul is a great plain
Made desolate,
And the beating of a million hearts
Is but the whisper of night winds
Blowing across it.
Skipwith Cannell (1887–1957) was an American poet.
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Photo by Jeremy Alford on Unsplash
The cactus in the desert stands
Like time’s inviolate sentinel,
Watching the sun-washed waste of sands
Lest they their ancient secrets tell.
And the lost lore of mournful lands
It knows alone and guards too well.
Wiser than Sphynx or pyramid,
It points a stark hand at the sky,
And all the stars alight or hid
It counts as they go rolling by;
And mysteries the gods forbid
Darken its heavy memory.
I asked how old the world was—yea,
And why yon ruddy mountain grew
Out of hell’s fire. By night nor day
It answered not, though all it knew,
But lifted, as it stopped my way,
Its wrinkled fingers toward the blue
Inscrutable and stern and still
It waits the everlasting doom.
Races and years may do their will—
Lo, it will rise above their tomb,
Till the drugged earth has drunk her fill
Of light, and falls asleep in gloom.
Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) was an American poet, critic, and editor. She is best known as the founding publisher and editor of Poetry magazine.
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I must go down to the seas again, to the
lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer
her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and
the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey
dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call
of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be
denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white
clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and
the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the
vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where
the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing
fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the
long trick’s over.
John Masefield (1878–1967) was an English poet and children’s fiction writer.
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Photo by Kyle Nieber on Unsplash.
Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout;
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking merry flies. In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy trochilus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803 – 1849) was an English poet, playwright and doctor.
Mark McGuinness reads and discusses the poem in his podcast A Mouthful of Air, a podcast of classic and contemporary poetry. Podcast transcription is available.
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Snowdon From Pernsarn by Charles Thomas Burt. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash.
The Heaven doth not contain so many stars,
So many leaves not prostrate lie in woods
When autumn’s old and Boreas sounds his wars,
So many waves have not the ocean floods,
As my rent mind hath torments all the night,
And heart spends sighs when Phœbus brings the light.
Why should I have been partner of the light,
Who, crost in birth by bad aspéct of stars,
Have never since had happy day or night?
Why was not I a liver in the woods,
Or citizen of Thetis’s crystal floods,
Than made a man, for love and fortune’s wars?
I look each day when death should end the wars,
Uncivil wars, ’twixt sense and reason’s light;
My pains I count to mountains, meads, and floods,
And of my sorrow partners make the stars;
All desolate I haunt the fearful woods,
When I should give myself to rest at night.
With watchful eyes I ne’er behold the night,
Mother of peace, but ah! to me of wars,
And Cynthia, queen-like, shining through the woods,
When straight those lamps come in my thought, whose light
My judgment dazzled, passing brightest stars,
And then mine eyes en-isle themselves with floods.
Turn to their springs again first shall the floods,
Clear shall the sun the sad and gloomy night,
To dance about the pole cease shall the stars,
The elements renew their ancient wars
Shall first, and be deprived of place and light,
E’er I find rest in city, fields, or woods.
End these my days, indwellers of the woods,
Take this my life, ye deep and raging floods;
Sun, never rise to clear me with thy light,
Horror and darkness, keep a lasting night;
Consume me, care, with thy intestine wars,
And stay your influence o’er me, bright stars!
In vain the stars, indwellers of the woods,
Care, horror, wars, I call, and raging floods,
For all have sworn no night shall dim my sight.
William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585 –1649) was a Scottish poet.
Mark McGuinness reads and discusses the poem in his podcast A Mouthful of Air, a podcast of classic and contemporary poetry. Podcast transcription is available.
To read more poems, click here.
What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.
Francis Thompson (1859 –1907) was an English poet; he is best known for his poem “The Hound of Heaven.”
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The sheep get up and make their many tracks
And bear a load of snow upon their backs,
And gnaw the frozen turnip to the ground
With sharp quick bite, and then go noising round
The boy that pecks the turnips all the day
And knocks his hands to keep the cold away
And laps his legs in straw to keep them warm
And hides behind the hedges from the storm.
The sheep, as tame as dogs, go where he goes
And try to shake their fleeces from the snows,
Then leave their frozen meal and wander round
The stubble stack that stands beside the ground,
And lie all night and face the drizzling storm
And shun the hovel where they might be warm.
John Clare (1793 – 1864) was an English peasant poet of the Romantic school, and one of the English literature’s finest nature poets.
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There is no Life or Death,
Only activity
And in the absolute
Is no declivity.
There is no Love or Lust
Only propensity
Who would possess
Is a nonentity.
There is no First or Last
Only equality
And who would rule
Joins the majority.
There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity.
Mina Loy (1882 – 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, and painter labeled as a Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist, feminist, conceptualist, modernist, and post-modernist artist.
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