Author Topic: Poetry Page (Read 724039 times)

PatH · « **Reply #3000 on:** September 21, 2011, 02:05:06 PM »

Thanks, everyone, for those sweet baby poems. She is Jacqueline Kaiser, and they're home now and doing well.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3001 on:** September 22, 2011, 01:36:43 AM »

Leaving Andalusia
~ Jacqueline Dee Parker

We’ve crossed latticed shadows
of cork and olive trees,

toured bodegas, cathedrals,
pueblos blancos carved in hillsides,

whiffed blossoms sprung
off painted pots hooked on stucco walls

on ribbons of street the width
of a swift’s wingspan—

centuries of ruin and mosaic,
cupolas gilded in apricot light,

basins of holy water, tiles,
stalactites, remains—

Thus, the eve of leaving,
folding maps, shaking sand from socks,

I’m lulled by the children, bent
over squares of paper cloth, hands

rollicking markers, drawing closely—
little girl and boy, just for a little while.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3002 on:** September 22, 2011, 01:42:02 AM »

Buying the Muse
~ Jacqueline West

for S.H.

First the antique strain
of fruit, the extinct
grafts of pear, fig, plum.
Then the coin
unearthed from grit
where it roughed its spot
for thirty years,
and then, the song,
pulled out of the sleeve
of an old silk robe,
cigarettes in its pocket.
We toss in our gifts,
wait for her to climb
from the shallow saline,
a mermaid made of wishes.
We think that we have the key.
Later, when the seams
have broken, the seal
of blood drained into ink,
we will wonder
just what we exchanged
for this bargain of silence,
these flat stones where
other wishers will skim
like grasshoppers, their hunger
seeking out our names.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3003 on:** September 22, 2011, 01:49:19 AM »

WISDOM …
~ Jacqueline Brumley

Owl is the grand and rather clever old man of the forest.
He can also spell Thursday.
He will tell you to stop worrying & just slow down.
Owl has a quiet mind. He likes to contemplate things.
He knows what time the sun rises & sets.
He knows all the stars in the sky & he can tell what your thinking.
When you are worried or… have a problem, go visit Owl cos he will know the answer & he’ll make you feel calm.
Owl’s best friend is Trust.

Babi · « **Reply #3004 on:** September 22, 2011, 08:10:07 AM »

I was enjoying Ms. Parker's "Leaving Andalusia", but found the closing puzzling.
The brevity of childhood seems wholly unrelated to what came before.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3005 on:** September 22, 2011, 10:19:36 AM »

Babi I think it is the rollicking markers that is confusing - not sure what that means - you can almost get the atmosphere after all that sightseeing that they are near their hotel or where ever they were sleeping while visiting the area and there were children about - who are only boys and girls - children for awhile because, they too will leave their childhood just as the one talking in the poem is leaving the area - maybe that is what the rollicking markers are - a marker can be the invisible mark of growing from child to adult and rollicking - could that word suggest that the children are having a rollicking good time just being children without the awareness that they are passing markers of growth towards maturity

Sand usually represents time so shaking sand [time] from their socks and talking about centuries of structures sounds like time is being addressed - and so I am back to assuming her reference to children and markers and finishing up for just a little while - must mean a passing of time is - oh yes, that must be it - we are all visitors - not just in Andalusia but in this world - and we all leave plus we leave behind our childhood and we leave behind the evidence of our being here by either creating children or, orchards or, fountains or, or, or...

It is a struggle to figure out exactly what she has in mind but then maybe that is her plan - to write in such a way that we can interpret the images we make from her words to tell us the story that fits our conception of time and our reason for being here.

I wondered if you noticed - all three poems were written by someone with the first name of Jacqueline as a nod to and inspiration for how Pat's new grand-daughter Jacqueline could join the chorus of poets with the name of Jacqueline.

PatH · « **Reply #3006 on:** September 22, 2011, 12:29:13 PM »

I certainly noticed. Thanks for the graceful tribute.

PatH · « **Reply #3007 on:** September 22, 2011, 07:23:22 PM »

Here's something else appropriate:

Infant Joy

"I have no name;
I am but two days old."
--What shall I call thee?
"I happy am;
Joy is my name."
--Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old;
sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile:
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee!

William Blake

Babi · « **Reply #3008 on:** September 23, 2011, 08:42:13 AM »

Makes sense, BARB. You're really good at this sort of exegesis. The William Blake that Pat
posted, that one I know.

Duh.

I really did not 'click' to the 'Jacqueline' and Pat's precious new granddaughter.
Some mornings I'm slower than others.

PatH · « **Reply #3009 on:** September 23, 2011, 05:48:45 PM »

Babi, if you had just learned that your new granddaughter's name was Jacqueline, you would be quick to notice the name too.

Babi · « **Reply #3010 on:** September 24, 2011, 08:46:31 AM »

How nice of you to say so, PAT.

I thought this little poem an apt description for all the lovely people I meet here on SL.

Build A Box Of Friendshipby Chuck Pool
Into a box of friendship
To insure that it is strong
First a layer of respect
On the bottom does belong.

Then to the sides attach,
In the corners where they meet,
Several anchors full of trust,
Devoid of all deceit.

The height of friendship can be measured
By the sides of four,
So make them all a larger cut,
And the box will hold much more.

Now fill it up with courtesy,
Honor and esteem,
Understanding, sympathy,
And passion for a dream.

Add to that your honesty,
Emotions joy and love,
And since they're so important,
Place them up above

But leave the box wide open
So all can see inside,
To learn what makes a friendship work
From the box you built with pride.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3011 on:** September 24, 2011, 12:10:53 PM »

Babi wow - and to think that Senior Learn is a place where we can express all those virtues - thanks for reminding us of who we are.

SONNET
~ William Shakespeare

...When to the session of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death¹s dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish¹d sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Babi · « **Reply #3012 on:** September 25, 2011, 08:05:52 AM »

I have admired this sonnet, like so many others, since I first read it so long ago. But it has
taken me until these latter years to fully know it's meaning. To "grieve at grievances foregone", and rehearse the "fore-bemoaned moans". It happens too often when I can't
fall asleep at night, no matter how I chide myself.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3013 on:** September 25, 2011, 12:52:37 PM »

Yes, for me it is not so much the night as the evening and sometimes the morning after coffee - thank goodness the phone often rings and I can stir out of my vanish'd state and then a call to a dear friend or two who at our age all have experienced a grievances foregone Each time I notice our friendship is that much tighter.

Can you believe this summer - here it is almost October and we are going to have another 100 degree day. And except for about 45 minutes of rain over a week ago we have not had any since last June - I feel as if this is eternal. I'd love to turn the spigots on all around the house and soak everything for 24 hours but the bill - I would be paying off a water bill for over a year.

Evidently Judith Wright has made this poem about a Drought quite famous and from the content it sounds like she must be writing about Australia. Found her - here is a short bio
http://allpoetry.com/Judith_Wright

Drought Year
Judith Write

That time of drought the embered air
burned to the roots of timber and grass.
The crackling lime-scrub would not bear
and Mooni Creek was sand that year.
The dingo's cry was strange to hear.

I heard the dingoes cry
in the scrub on the Thirty-mile Dry.
I saw the wedgetail take his fill
perching on the seething skull.
I saw the eel wither where he curled
in the last blood-drop of a spent world.

I heard the bone whisper in the hide
of the big red horse that lay where he died.
Prop that horse up, make him stand,
hoofs turned down in the bitter sand
make him stand at the gate of the Thirty-mile Dry.
Turn this way and you will die-
and strange and loud was the dingoes' cry.

PatH · « **Reply #3014 on:** September 25, 2011, 09:54:00 PM »

I really like that. Favorite line: I saw the eel wither where he curled.

Babi · « **Reply #3015 on:** September 26, 2011, 08:15:40 AM »

Frightening, a bit, to see how bad a drought can be. The drought here was bad enough; one
felt so helpless.
I went looking, and found most poems about nature are about it's beauty, and most poems
about helplessness referred to relationships or the pain of loved ones. I'll keep looking.

roshanarose · « **Reply #3016 on:** September 27, 2011, 10:12:49 PM »

Sweet friends, all.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3017 on:** September 30, 2011, 06:16:31 PM »

A Dry Autumn
~ M. Ragland

Tamarack

Wind lashes the hillsides
from high ridgetops. Branches
flail under bruised skies
of wide, plaintive eyes
staring down--fear blanches
a lovely face lightning divides.

The steep valley shaking,
my heart cannonading,
breathless among hemlock
and larches and gaunt rock
I halt, the day fading,
grief-struck by her leave taking.

What horror could blind her
grey eyes, so clear seeing,
her head tossed, undaunted--
lost, all she once wanted--
into the woods fleeing
old voices, till buzzards find her?

Loved, helplessly kissed
by her who spoke plain words,
a girl from a hollow,
I watch darkness grow
in the mountains, and birds
seek their nests. Soon, a slow mist.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3018 on:** September 30, 2011, 06:17:49 PM »

A Dry Autumn
~ M. Ragland

Excavating One Twilight

How to excavate one twilight
with a rusted spade,
from the hard clay of late fall,
when all that remains
of slanting light on water
darkly mirroring willows,
a wavering footbridge,
your voice hesitating in
the waiting stillness,
are faint encryptions,
tablets broken and scattered,
buried by many seasons
in the landscape of myself.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3019 on:** September 30, 2011, 06:19:28 PM »

A Dry Autumn
~ M. Ragland

Drought

The oaks that line the road
know it didn't rain yesterday
or the month before,
that there have been summers
when the lake bottom cracked
and a noon sun lit the wheel
of an old toy in the sand
at the bottom of a well.

A woodpecker knocks on the
leaning ash black ants are eating
from the inside out.
Dust rises.
A thirty-something blonde in a mail Jeep
reaches out and
the rusted hinge creaks.
Her blue eyes,
like an oven set on broil,
measure me
from boots to sweat-soaked shirt.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3020 on:** September 30, 2011, 06:31:31 PM »

The Love of October
~ W. S. Merwin

A child looking at ruins grows younger
but cold
and wants to wake to a new name
I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows
and the wren laughs in the early shade now
come again shining glance in your good time
naked air late morning
my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun.

Babi · « **Reply #3021 on:** October 01, 2011, 08:31:15 AM »

What is the color of shouders, I wonder?

October is my favorite month. Here is an October poem by one Richard Greene.

It Was One of Those Fine October Days

It was one of those fine October days
free from summer’s heat and haze
but not yet gripped by autumn chill.

It was one of those fine October days
when the sky’s so clear
you can see the moon
through the atmosphere
at midday.

It was one of those fine October days
when the trees sport yellow and red
instead of everyday summer green.

It was one of those fine October days
when one draws a deep breath
and is grateful
to be resident on Earth.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3022 on:** October 01, 2011, 11:22:41 AM »

Just too perfect Babi - and yes, we are today having one of those fine October days - only thing the leaves are turning for lack of water but the sky is that incredible blue that happens in the fall and we are only in the high 80s today which for us feels like a crisp fall day

Well tons to do and now that the back of the 100 degree days has been broken there is much repair of the yard - looks like whole swaths of the yard will not recover and so I need to rethink how to contain gravel and simply lay down gravel - I decided it could be fun with some silvery metal garbage pails and feeding troughs . sitting around filled with cascading vines and flowers so that I could hand water them and still have some color - but I have lost several trees and bushes so it will really be a hot baking desert in almost half the yard.

But on the plus side I can get my comforter washed and drink my coffee on the patio - maybe even have my lunch out there according to how fast it heats up and walk earlier in the evening instead of waiting till 10: or after - I will sorta miss the comradery of everyone out walking and riding their bikes in the late night dark in order to avoid the heat - it really didn't cool down with the wind rising blowing hard up from the Gulf Coast until after 9: where as most summers that starts around 5: in the late afternoon.

Well it was a summer for the books now lets see what kind of fall we have - if the oaks tell a story it will be a very mild winter. Hardly an acorn anywhere.

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Larger and finer meanings are read into the older legends of the plants, and the universality of certain myths is expressed in the concurrence of ideas in the beginnings of the great religions.

One of the first figures in the leading cosmologies is a tree of life guarded by a serpent. In the Judaic faith this was the tree in the garden of Eden; the Scandinavians made it an ash, Ygdrasil; Christians usually specify the tree as an apple, Hindus as a soma, Persians as a homa, Cambodians as a talok; this early tree is the vine of Bacchus, the snake-entwined caduceus of Mercury, the twining creeper of the Eddas, the bohidruma of Buddha, the fig of Isaiah, the tree of Aesculapius with the serpent around his trunk."

~ Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits and Plants, 1911

Babi · « **Reply #3023 on:** October 02, 2011, 08:14:41 AM »

I had no idea a tree was a part of so many religious origins. But I can understand it. There is
something about a beautiful tree that has always touched me deeply.

The Presence of Trees
by Michael S. Glaser

I have always felt the living presence
of trees
the forest that calls to me as deeply
as I breathe,
as though the woods were marrow of my bone
as though
I myself were tree, a breathing, reaching
arc of the larger canopy
beside a brook bubbling to foam
like the one
deep in these woods,
that calls
that whispers home

I like this guy.
Michael Glaser recently received the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching at St. Mary's College in Maryland. He has served as a Maryland Poet-in-the-Schools for 25 years, published over 300 poems in literary journals, newspapers and anthologies. His most recent collection of poems, Being A Father, was published in July 2004, when he was also appointed as the State of Maryland's Poet Laureate.
He can be reached at msglaser@smcm.edu.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3024 on:** October 03, 2011, 02:35:24 PM »

lovely Babi - what a lovely contribution

Balance
~ A.L. Kline

We were moral in those first dawns too,
grasslands, lake-shores, deserts and seas.

We were tender, nurtured, we countered
the errors of culture, loved, knew beauty.

Religion has no sole claim to morality,
rarely true to the human in us, the balance,

the mean we made, the clear path we struck
between mind and body, in rooted being.

Babi · « **Reply #3025 on:** October 04, 2011, 08:31:40 AM »

I can't say I agree with A.L. Kline. In those earliest dawns, I suspect survival was the only
morality. That includes survival as a group, of course, so certain mutual obligations applied.
Tenderness for a child is, I thoroughly believe, instinctive to all nature. How much tenderness
there was elsewhere, I would hesitate to say. Survival took precedence over all. And I also
believe, as I believe most of us do, that there is more to humanity than mind and body,...
unless Kline is giving much more scope to 'mind' than he (?) suggests here.

kidsal · « **Reply #3026 on:** October 06, 2011, 03:49:29 AM »

The leaves never know
which leaf
will be the first to fall...
Does the wind know?
Soseki

Babi · « **Reply #3027 on:** October 06, 2011, 08:10:50 AM »

I see the Nobel Prize for Literature went to a Swedish poet, a Tomas Transtormer. I looked
up on of his poems; we'll probably be seeing more of them now.

After a Death
by Tomas Tranströmer
translated by Robert Bly

Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3028 on:** October 06, 2011, 06:30:09 PM »

Yep I think you are right Babi - Kline makes it all sounds like a utopia -

Thanks Callie a delight of fall - I guess most of the country is feeling the cool days and color is washing the trees - I can only imagine and from time to time I look at a cam located in some National Park that lets me know that fall had arrived.

Interesting Poem from Transtormer Babi - we get no hint of a samurai and then all of a sudden he is the feature clothed in the black scales of a dragon - not sure the symbolism but then I may need to read the poem a few times.

Well I guess I am surprised our discussions are not filled with comments about Steve Jobs along with his wonderful quotes - if it were not for his creative view of the world and the ability to actually bring his creative concepts into the full light of day that have benefited the world but especially his creativity made us here on Senior Learn.

We have a community of folks we look forward to chatting with online - some from the other ends of the world. Because of him we have the ability to not only share our thoughts but the beautiful writings of others are quoted on our pages and we even have wonderful photos and graphics that give us a glimpse of our surroundings, information or beauty - all this wonder from a very few men but he is given credit for making a huge impact that even affected his competitors.

There have been a few men in recent years who have tought us how to live in the face of death - I am thinking of the professor whose Last Lecture we read and watched on youtube in the last few years and then all the comments about how the last Pope was an example of how to die well - and more intimately we have friends here on Senior Learn who passed and we feel empty with our loss - we are only reminded today how Anna, Fairanna, our leader here on Poetry is still in our hearts and minds.

But for the young especially who are all in their late teens and early twenties - for them the loss of Steve Jobs is stabbing their insides much as those of us remember the loss of John F. Kennedy - Oh they knew he was ill, very ill, but they had seen him bite the bullet several times in the past so they fully expected he would be successful again therefore, his death came as a shock. There were tweets to parents and friends and emails and phone calls to aunts, uncles, grandparents - it was a sadness they had to share and be comforted by talking to others about what this man meant to them and their life.

The expression I heard most from my grandboys is Steve Jobs was the one who gave them a bicycle for their minds - they go on how that allowed them a freedom to explore thoughts and ideas similar to riding a bike when they were young allowed them to explore their neighborhood and later their community. And so in memory of Steve Jobs the next poem...

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3029 on:** October 06, 2011, 06:31:25 PM »

Loss And Gain
~ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Octavia · « **Reply #3030 on:** October 06, 2011, 09:33:09 PM »

I certainly agree with Wordsworth about days idly spent

. Who's to say what is success. There are so many workaholicks around.
After all as the saying goes, 'nobody at your funeral talks about how clean your oven was.'

This hotter weather is helping my shoulder pain, but we are in the same boat as you were Barbara, bushfires everywhere. A vineyard has been lost in the last couple of weeks.

Babi · « **Reply #3031 on:** October 07, 2011, 08:14:40 AM »

Transtromer's images made me think of growing older, BARB, tho' that may not have been his
intent. Then the contrast between the samurai, and the impressive armor that made him look
so imposing when he wore it. That makes me think that the real person is not the one we
see in all the armor and outward show.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3032 on:** October 07, 2011, 02:08:30 PM »

Movie Star Reflections
~ Marilyn Lott

They were so beautiful, these ladies
Just like the movie stars
For a selected beauties chosen
That were truly the best by far

What was it do you think
That made them stand out from the rest?
Why, were they such charmers
When they got right down to the test

If you look closely at their pictures
Even in black and white
Their charm and immense beauty
Is such a fresh delight

They didn’t need any help
To make their beauty shine
Oh no, they were so natural
Their allure was just divine

Wouldn’t it be a lot of fun
To turn back the clocks awhile?
Can’t you see the autos they rode in?
I’ll bet they traveled in style

Oh well, it’s in the past now
We’ve gone in different directions
But it’s still fun to view
These ladies’ Movie Star Reflections!

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3033 on:** October 07, 2011, 02:15:49 PM »

February 8th, 2009

A/N: Alright this is pretty bad, but i thought i should write a poem about fire, or a bushfire, since in Australia we've had the worst bushfires in our history. So far fifty people have died and six hundred an fifty homes destroyed, but that's just an estimation. There are still people to be accounted for. Anyway, here's a poem!

BUSH FIRE

All was drowsy,
In the blistering heat
Rays beat down
On the emptied street

Quite far away
A careless match was lit
Not knowing what terror
That it could knit

That little spark,
So little a flare
Flickered so slightly
No one did care

Then it broke out;
Ate all in sight
Growing and growing
In stature and might

It blazed through forests
And came to the street
Once so peaceful and calm
Now with fire it did compete

The wild sparks crackled
Sharp like a spear
A monster, a bomb
A burst of flaming fear

It came and left
Leaving nothing behind
Only a ravaged road
Fire is not kind

Many did perish
And though some still alive
With those memories
They didn’t really survive

It was eerily silent
As the blaze died out
Not a sound could be heard
Neither a screech nor a shout

All was gone
And a breeze swept by
Then at last, a drop
Clouds covered the sky

But it t’was too late
How brutal is fate

Babi · « **Reply #3034 on:** October 08, 2011, 08:40:40 AM »

Ah, me. If Ms. Lott really thinks those beauties didn't 'need any help to make their
beauty shine", she is naive, indeed. Many of them you wouldn't have recognized at all
if you met them on the street without their makeup.

Which of our Australian buddies wrote the poem about fire? It's not bad at all.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3035 on:** October 13, 2011, 12:26:23 AM »

An Autumn Rain-Scene
~ by Thomas Hardy

There trudges one to a merry-making
With sturdy swing,
On whom the rain comes down.

To fetch the saving medicament
Is another bent,
On whom the rain comes down.

One slowly drives his herd to the stall
Ere ill befall,
On whom the rain comes down.

This bears his missives of life and death
With quickening breath,
On whom the rain comes down.

One watches for signals of wreck or war
From the hill afar,
On whom the rain comes down.

No care if he gain a shelter or none,
Unhired moves on,
On whom the rain comes down.

And another knows nought of its chilling fall
Upon him aat all,
On whom the rain comes down.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3036 on:** October 13, 2011, 12:31:03 AM »

Berry Rain
~ by Raymond A. Foss

Heavy drops of rain
hang bodily from
the green fruit,
the bunches of berries
long before the harvest
hanging on the barbed vines,
wound through the rhododendron
Heavy berry rain, a teardrop
clinging to the bright green
held by its desire, its love
to nurture, to feed, to caress
the growing, maturing vine

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3037 on:** October 13, 2011, 12:33:56 AM »

The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain
~ Delmore Schwartz

The common rain had come again
Slanting and colorless, pale and anonymous,
Fainting falling in the first evening
Of the first perception of the actual fall,
The long and late light had slowly gathered up
A sooty wood of clouded sky, dim and distant more and
more
Until, at dusk, the very sense of selfhood waned,
A weakening nothing halted, diminished or denied or set
aside,
Neither tea, nor, after an hour, whiskey,
Ice and then a pleasant glow, a burning,
And the first leaping wood fire
Since a cold night in May, too long ago to be more than
Merely a cold and vivid memory.
Staring, empty, and without thought
Beyond the rising mists of the emotion of causeless
sadness,
How suddenly all consciousness leaped in spontaneous
gladness,
Knowing without thinking how the falling rain (outside, all
over)
In slow sustained consistent vibration all over outside
Tapping window, streaking roof,
running down runnel and drain
Waking a sense, once more, of all that lived outside of us,
Beyond emotion, for beyond the swollen
distorted shadows and lights
Of the toy town and the vanity fair
of waking consciousness!

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3038 on:** October 13, 2011, 12:43:57 AM »

John Keats (1795-1821)

TO AUTUMN.

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #3039 on:** October 13, 2011, 12:44:50 AM »

Autumn Poetry

~ Author Unknown

"Just before the death of flowers,
And before they are buried in snow,
There comes a festival season
When nature is all aglow."

~~ Discussion Leaders: Barb

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