Poetry Page

[mrssherlock]

Welcome to our Autumn Poetry Page.
A haven for those who listen to the words
that open hearts, imagination, and our feelings
that we share about the poems we post - Please Join Us.

Poetry can be part of life       rather than a thing apart. Share with us       Poems about the end          of the natural year.            Tell us       How you celebrate          a poet's life and poems. Autumn holidays -       Tell us about Poetry in          Fall parties and gift giving.

A few Poetry Links:

• Famous Poets and Poems about Autumn
• Fall Poetry
• Poems for Autumn

Discussion Leaders: BarbStAubrey & Fairanna

Volcano (Haiku)
by Chuck Keller

Sometimes the pressure is more than nature allows.
 
Snow covered peaceful
peaks where tranquility lives
'til pressure explodes
 

[mrssherlock]

The bare limbs of the

trees shiver in the wind and

speak in semaphore

Charles de Lint

[mrssherlock]

"November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring."
-  Clyde Watson

[mrssherlock]

"The sky is streaked with them
burning hole in black space --
like fireworks, someone says
all friendly in the dark chill
of Newcomb Hollow in November,
friends known only by voices.

We lie on the cold sand and it
embraces us, this beach
where locals never go in summer
and boast of their absence. Now
we lie eyes open to the flowers
of white ice that blaze over us

and seem to imprint directly
on our brains. I feel the earth,
rolling beneath as we face out
into the endlessness we usually
ignore. Past the evanescent
meteors, infinity pulls hard."
-   Marge Piercy, Leonids Over Us

[mrssherlock]

"Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapory air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air."
-   William Cullen Bryant, Autum   

[BarbStAubrey]

Oh my Jackie  you found and shared a treasure trove - I love the Lunt and William Cullen Bryant's Autum   

Every line of Autumn is a wonder - I wanted to say this or that line was special but I couldn't stop - the next line was too good not to mention - each line is a wonderment and so I am repeating the entire poem again.

Autumn

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapory air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

[Babi]

 The two Dickenson poems seem quite a departure from her usual
style. I didn't know quite what to make of them.  It was a comfort to
relax again into William Cullen Bryant.

[mrssherlock]

That is how I felt about the Bryant.  It stands as a whole, can not be reduced any further.

[BarbStAubrey]

 I just looked at had my sox knocked off - the WJB poem is a Sonnet -  look - it is 14 lines where ever other line, in groups of 4, rhyme the last word of the line and then the last two lines rhyme - t here are several forms of Sonnets but the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG is one of the forms.  

Was WCB in Congress? Did we actually have a poet in Congress? I need to look this person  up and build a structure around who he was.

Aha I was thinking William Jennings Bryan - here is the link to a Bio for WCB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cullen_Bryant

Yes and here is the link from Wikipedia for William Jennings Bryan - one thing mixing up the two men I did not realize how recent in our history WJB was on the national scene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jennings_Bryan

And here is the link defining the makeup of the various Sonnet forms - sure enough the Shakespeare form is what WCB  used to create his poem Autumn  
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sonnet.html

Oh this is a nice bit - an excerpt from a book it looks like - however it is a nice bit that gets  us closer to the man - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121388985835788805.html

[BarbStAubrey]

Here is another WCB Autumn poem - this time not a Sonnet and I just do not think it compares to his Autumn  Sonnet - Thanks Jackie again for finding and sharing it.

My Autumn Walk
          By William Cullen Bryant
 
ON woodlands ruddy with autumn   
  The amber sunshine lies;   
I look on the beauty round me,   
  And tears come into my eyes.   
    
For the wind that sweeps the meadows           
  Blows out of the far Southwest,   
Where our gallant men are fighting,   
  And the gallant dead are at rest.   
    
The golden-rod is leaning,   
  And the purple aster waves,           
In a breeze from the land of battles,   
  A breath from the land of graves.   
    
Full fast the leaves are dropping   
  Before that wandering breath;   
As fast, on the field of battle,           
  Our brethren fall in death.   
    
Beautiful over my pathway   
  The forest spoils are shed;   
They are spotting the grassy hillocks   
  With purple and gold and red.           
    
Beautiful is the death-sleep   
  Of those who bravely fight   
In their country’s holy quarrel,   
  And perish for the Right.   
    
But who shall comfort the living,           
  The light of whose homes is gone:   
The bride that, early widowed,   
  Lives broken-hearted on;   
    
The matron whose sons are lying   
  In graves on a distant shore;           
The maiden, whose promised husband   
  Comes back from the war no more?   
    
I look on the peaceful dwellings   
  Whose windows glimmer in sight,   
With croft and garden and orchard,           
  That bask in the mellow light;   
    
And I know that, when our couriers   
  With news of victory come,   
They will bring a bitter message   
  Of hopeless grief to some.           
    
Again I turn to the woodlands,   
  And shudder as I see   
The mock-grape’s blood-red banner   
  Hung out on the cedar-tree;   
    
And I think of days of slaughter,           
  And the night-sky red with flames,   
On the Chattahoochee’s meadows,   
  And the wasted banks of the James.   
    
Oh, for the fresh spring-season,   
  When the groves are in their prime,           
And far away in the future   
  Is the frosty autumn-time!   
    
Oh, for that better season,   
  When the pride of the foe shall yield,   
And the hosts of God and Freedom           
  March back from the well-won field;   
    
And the matron shall clasp her first-born   
  With tears of joy and pride;   
And the scarred and war-worn lover   
  Shall claim his promised bride!           
    
The leaves are swept from the branches;   
  But the living buds are there,   
With folded flower and foliage,   
  To sprout in a kinder air.   

[mrssherlock]

Mention of Thanatopsis led me to look it up.  Here is the last verse; he wrote this at 17!

  So live, that when thy summons comes to join   
The innumerable caravan which moves   
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take     75
His chamber in the silent halls of death,   
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,   
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed   
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave   
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch     80
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

[BarbStAubrey]

Jackie this link to the poem is a study link that is close to being an annotated version...interesting...no clodhopper rhyming words is he...

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/Bryant/thanatopsis.html

[Babi]

  I first read 'Thanatopsis' in high school. It so impressed me; I'm sure it
had a good deal to do with stirring up my appreciation of poetry.

Here's a November poem. I can't say it fits my part of the country, but
it does match my more romantic ideas of approaching winter, snow and all.

"November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring."
-  Clyde Watson

[mrssherlock]

How stereotypical that vision is to all of us though we live far from the New England winters it describes.  Until I moved to Oregon 5 years ago I had never lived where there was more snow than once a decade, maybe, and then it only dusted the ground. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Under the Harvest Moon
          by Carl Sandburg

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

[BarbStAubrey]

The Harvest Moon
          by Ted Hughes

The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can't sleep,
So they go out where elms and oak trees keep
A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come!

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep
Stare up at her petrified, while she swells
Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing
Closer and closer like the end of the world.

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry `We are ripe, reap us!' and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills.

[BarbStAubrey]

Hurrahing In Harvest
          by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet

[Babi]

Ah, Gerard Manley Hopkins.   "..barbarous in beauty", indeed. What a way he has with words. The wind-walks, and the 'wilder, wilful wavier-'.

 Here's one of those so simple, so lovely little poems.

The snow is melting
     by Kobayashi Issa

The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children.

[BarbStAubrey]

Berlin Wall
 
A stone from the
broken Berlin wall
Whispered last night;
Don't look at me with such hatred
My wounds are the mark of history.
I was prepared to bear
Your razor edged pain,
You could have carved me
As Jesus too.......

? Dr. Padmesh Gupta

 

[BarbStAubrey]

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

    -- Robert Frost.

[mrssherlock]

Frost has always le mot juste.

[mrssherlock]

THE THINGS THAT MAKE A SOLDIER GREAT
Edgar Guest

The things that make a soldier great and send him out to die,
To face the flaming cannon's mouth nor ever question why,
Are lilacs by a little porch, the row of tulips red,
The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed,
The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall:
'Tis these that make a soldier great.
He's fighting for them all.

'Tis not the pomp and pride of kings that make a soldier brave;
'Tis not allegiance to the flag that over him may wave;
For soldiers never fight so well on land or on the foam
As when behind the cause they see the little place called home.
Endanger but that humble street whereon his children run,
You make a soldier of the man who never bore a gun.
What is it through the battle smoke the valiant soldier sees?

The little garden far away, the budding apple trees,
The little patch of ground back there, the children at their play,
Perhaps a tiny mound behind the simple church of gray.
The golden thread of courage isn't linked to castle dome
But to the spot, where'er it be — the humblest spot called home.
And now the lilacs bud again and all is lovely there
And homesick soldiers far away know spring is in the air;
The tulips come to bloom again, the grass once more is green,
And every man can see the spot where all his joys have been.

He sees his children smile at him, he hears the bugle call,
And only death can stop him now — he's fighting for them all.

[Babi]

 After a few weeks of cold and wet,  we are again blessed with beautiful days, sunny skies, and just enough coolness to be pleasant. Perfect weather!  We are having a spell of Indian Summer, so I bring you Emily Dickinson again.

 
INDIAN SUMMER.

These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, --
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

[mrssherlock]

Babi:  What a peaceful start for the day. Comfort is sorely needed these days.   The news has been so gloomy and tomorrow we recall the sacrifices of generations of our young men and women. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Yes, a lovely beginning Jackie I agree Babi sharing Emily with us is just so perfect. Babi after reading the poem what hit me was how far from real gardening so many of us are - oh we have all sorts of plants we know and even grow but to have intimate knowledge of the life of bees!?!

[BarbStAubrey]

Here is another Indian Summer poem that reminds us of Rural life.

Indian Summer
          by Diane Glancy

There’s a farm auction up the road.
Wind has its bid in for the leaves.
Already bugs flurry the headlights
between cornfields at night.
If this world were permanent,
I could dance full as the squaw dress
on the clothesline.
I would not see winter
in the square of white yard-light on the wall.
But something tugs at me.
The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily.
Everything is up for grabs
like a box of farm tools broken open.
I hear the spirits often in the garden
and along the shore of corn.
I know this place is not mine.
I hear them up the road again.
This world is a horizon, an open sea.
Behind the house, the white iceberg of the barn.

[JoanK]

"The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily".

Yes.

[Babi]

In honor of Memorial Day, what could be better than Rupert Brooke's
"The Soldier".  He wrote of an English soldier, but it could be written of any soldier.

   The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

[mrssherlock]

Memorial Day

The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.  

The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.  

Above their wreath-strewn  
graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and  
fought the fight.
Through flying lead and  
crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom  
and the Right.  

May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie  
beneath this sod,
Who went through fire  
and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.

In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . .  
Who brought a sword.

by Joyce Kilmer

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow  
Between the crosses, row on row,  
That mark our place; and in the sky  
The larks, still bravely singing, fly  
Scarce heard amid the guns below.  
We are the Dead. Short days ago  
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,  
Loved and were loved, and now we lie  
In Flanders fields.  
Take up our quarrel with the foe:  
To you from failing hands we throw  
The torch; be yours to hold it high.  
If ye break faith with us who die  
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow  
In Flanders fields.  

by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae

Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die.

Mary Elizabeth Frye

[BarbStAubrey]

Ah yes, I remember having to memorize In Flanders Fields when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade. We all have our favorite Armistice Day poem and this one i can hear in my head with Richard Burton's voice rolling it out.

Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

"All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening ....

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."

So down we lay again. "I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!"

And many a skeleton shook his head.
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

    -- Thomas Hardy

[Babi]

 We also had to memorize "In Flanders Field" in school, BARB.  It's a beautiful poem, short enough and rhythmic so that school children can
easily memorize it.
  The first death in my close family was that of my Mother when I was 13.  A family friend told me to remember that when I cried I was crying for myself; that my Mother was well and happy.  That stuck with me and influenced how I've always viewed death and grief.

[BarbStAubrey]

Yes, I agree Babi when something hurts we most often cry and when the hurt is bad coming from inside added to the hurt is confusion and we cry and stop and cry again while we try all sorts of things to feel better, like going through personal objects and saving some that we associate with a good memory. However, there is always that tinge of sadness isn't there as we still hurt a bit missing the person -

I know I was lucky and didn't loose my mother till I was 50 but often I am doing something and in the middle I forget and want to call my mother or I see something that I think she would have enjoyed seeing and again, I want to call her - it takes me a minute to remember she isn't here and where I no longer actually cry I am close to it for just a minute as I hurt again that she is gone, lost to me for the rest of my life. It hurts doesn't it.

The hurt for me that I still react is my son. This Christmas it will be 4 years now  and I still wake up in tears as I've had a dream or if I am tired I often remember and the remembering makes me sad. I still feel badly that I did not get up to see him in his house in New Mexico - I kept putting it off and it was 4  years since he moved to his mountain home.  I find that from time to time I read and add to the discussion about loosing a loved one on the Senior & Friends site - our sister site since the closing of SeniorNet.

Here are two poems written from the view point of someone who lost a loved one and the other from the viewpoint imagined by the deceased.

If Tears Could...

If tears could build a stairway
And memories were a lane,
I would walk right up to heaven
To bring you home again.
No farewell words were spoken.
No time to say good-bye.
You were gone before we knew it,
And only God knows why.
My heart still aches in sadness
And secret tears still flow.
What it meant to lose you,
No one will ever know.

I AM FREE

Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free
I'm following the path God laid for me
I took His hand when I heard Him call
I turned my back and left it all.

I could not stay another day, to laugh,
to love, to work or play.
Tasks undone must stay that way
I've found that peace at the close of the day.

If parting has left a void, then fill it
with remembered joy.
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss,
Ah, yes, these things I too will miss.

Be not burdened with times of sorrow
I wish for you the sunshine of tomorrow.
My life's been full, I savored much
Good friends, good times,
a loved one's touch.

Perhaps my time seemed all to brief,
Don't lengthen it now with undue grief.
Lift up your hearts and share with me,
God wants me now, He set me free.

[mrssherlock]

Emily Dickinson speaks of the part of the heart that will not be available after a loved one passes.  Not all love, I believe, but the love which has lost its object is being "put away".

THE BUSTLE in a house 
The morning after death 
Is solemnest of industries 
Enacted upon earth,— 
   
The sweeping up the heart,         5
And putting love away 
We shall not want to use again 
Until eternity.

[Babi]

 BARBARA, I think we all feel that the loss of a child is the hardest of all losses to bear.  I lost two sons in childbirth, so I never got to know them and did not have that loss to bear.  I grieved over the babies..how could I not. At odd moments will still wonder what they would have been like had they lived, and what I missed in not having an Alan and a Phillip in my life.

[mrssherlock]

Babi:  My first pregnancy ended in stillbirth.  Later I had a daughter so did not miss out on the experience of having a loving girl to raise.  I can remember almost every minute of that sad birth though the others have passed into the far reaches of my mind.

[mrssherlock]

We're having rain and hail here and snow in the Cascades.  This describes it so well:

Emily Dickinson. 1830–1886
 
 Beclouded
 
THE sky is low, the clouds are mean,   
A travelling flake of snow   
Across a barn or through a rut   
Debates if it will go.   
   
A narrow wind complains all day          5
How some one treated him;   
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught   
Without her diadem.

[mrssherlock]

Let's not be too serious:

 
Eugene Field. 1850–1895
 
 Seein' Things
 
I AIN'T afraid uv snakes or toads, or bugs or worms or mice,   
An' things 'at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice!   
I'm pretty brave I guess; an' yet I hate to go to bed,   
For, when I'm tucked up warm an snug an' when my prayers are said,   
Mother tells me "Happy Dreams" an' takes away the light,          5
An' leaves me lyin' all alone an' seein' things at night!   
   
Sometimes they're in the corner, sometimes they're by the door,   
Sometimes they're all a-standin' in the middle uv the floor;   
Sometimes they are a-sittin' down, sometimes they're walkin' round   
So softly and so creepy-like they never make a sound!   10
Sometimes they are as black as ink, an' other times they're white—   
But color ain't no difference when you see things at night!   
   
Once, when I licked a feller 'at had just moved on our street,   
An' father sent me up to bed without a bite to eat,   
I woke up in the dark an saw things standin' in a row,   15
A-lookin' at me cross-eyed an' p'intin' at me—so!   
Oh, my! I wuz so skeered 'at time I never slep' a mite—   
It's almost alluz when I'm bad I see things at night!   
   
Lucky thing I ain't a girl or I'd be skeered to death!   
Bein' I'm a boy, I duck my head an' hold my breath.   20
An' I am, oh so sorry I'm a naughty boy, an' then   
I promise to be better an' I say my prayers again!   
Gran'ma tells me that's the only way to make it right   
When a feller has been wicked an' sees things at night!   
   
An' so when other naughty boys would coax me into sin,   25
I try to skwush the Tempter's voice 'at urges me within;   
An' when they's pie for supper, or cakes 'at's big an' nice,   
I want to—but I do not pass my plate f'r them things twice!   
No, ruther let Starvation wipe me slowly out o' sight   
Than I should keep a-livin' on an' seein' things at night!

[mrssherlock]

Included in Louis Untermeyer's Modern American Poetry:

Irwin Russell. 1853–1879
 
De Fust Banjo
 
GO 'way, fiddle! folks is tired o' hearin' you a-squawkin'.   
Keep silence fur you' betters! don't you heah de banjo talkin'?   
About de 'possum's tail she's gwine to lecter—ladies, listen!   
About de ha'r whut isn't dar, an' why de ha'r is missin':   
   
"Dar's gwine to be a' oberflow," said Noah, lookin' solemn—          5
Fur Noah tuk de "Herald," an' he read de ribber column—   
An' so he sot his hands to wuk a-clarin' timber-patches,   
An' 'lowed he's gwine to build a boat to beat de steamah Natchez.   
   
Ol' Noah kep' a-nailin' an' a-chippin' an' a-sawin';   
An' all de wicked neighbors kep' a-laughin' an' a-pshawin';   10
But Noah didn't min' 'em, knowin' whut was gwine to happen:   
An' forty days an' forty nights de rain it kep' a-drappin'.   
   
Now, Noah had done cotched a lot ob ebry sort o' beas'es—   
Ob all de shows a-trabbelin', it beat 'em all to pieces!   
He had a Morgan colt an' sebral head o' Jarsey cattle—   15
An' druv 'em 'board de Ark as soon's he heered de thunder rattle.   
   
Den sech anoder fall ob rain! It come so awful hebby,   
De ribber riz immejitly, an' busted troo de lebbee;   
De people all wuz drownded out—'cep Noah an' de critters,   
An' men he'd hired to wuk de boat—an' one to mix de bitters.   20
   
De Ark she kep' a-sailin' an' a-sailin' an' a-sailin';   
De lion got his dander up, an' like to bruk de palin';   
De sarpints hissed; de painters yelled; tel', whut wid all de fussin',   
You c'u'dn't hardly heah de mate a-bossin' 'roun' an' cussin'.   
   
Now Ham, de only N***** whut was runnin' on de packet,   25
Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an' c'u'dn't stan' de racket;   
An' so, fur to amuse he-se'f, he steamed some wood an' bent it,   
An' soon he had a banjo made—de fust dat wuz invented.   
   
He wet de ledder, stretched it on; made bridge an' screws an' aprin;   
An' fitted in a proper neck—'twuz berry long an' taprin';   30
He tuk some tin, an' twisted him a thimble fur to ring it:   
An' den de mighty question riz: how wuz he gwine to string it?   
   
De 'possum had as fine a tail as dis dat I's a-singin';   
De har's so long an' thick an' strong,—des fit fur banjo-stringin';   
Dat N***** shaved 'em off as short as washday-dinner graces:   35
An' sorted ob 'em by de size—f'om little E's to basses.   
   
He strung her, tuned her, struck a jig,—'twuz "Nebber min' de wedder,"—   
She soun' like forty-lebben bands a-playin' all togedder:   
Some went to pattin'; some to dancin': Noah called de figgers;   
An' Ham he sot an' knocked de tune, de happiest ob niggers!   40
   
Now, sence dat time—it's mighty strange—dere's not de slightes' showin'   
Ob any ha'r at all upon de 'possum's tail a-growin';   
An' curi's, too, dat N*****'s ways: his people nebber los' 'em—   
Fur whar you finds de N*****—dar's de banjo an' de 'possum!   
 
 

[mrssherlock]

Just because I like it:

Charles Erskine Scott Wood. 1852–
 
 Sunrise
 
THE lean coyote, prowler of the night,   
Slips to his rocky fastnesses,   
Jack-rabbits noiselessly shuttle among the sage-brush,   
And from the castellated cliffs,   
Rock-ravens launch their proud black sails upon the day.          5
The wild horses troop back to their pastures.   
   
The poplar-trees watch beside the irrigation-ditches.   
Orioles, whose nests sway in the cotton-wood trees by the ditch-side, begin to twitter.   
All shy things, breathless, watch   
The thin white skirts of dawn,   10
The dancer of the sky,   
Who trips daintily down the mountain-side   
Emptying her crystal chalice....   
And a red-bird, dipped in sunrise, cracks from a poplar's top   
His exultant whip above a silver world.

[BarbStAubrey]

Eliot's Oak
          by Longfellow

Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud
  With sounds of unintelligible speech,
  Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,
  Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;
With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,
  Thou speakest a different dialect to each;
  To me a language that no man can teach,
  Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.
For underneath thy shade, in days remote,
  Seated like Abraham at eventide
  Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown
Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote
  His Bible in a language that hath died
  And is forgotten, save by thee alone.