A poem a day

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The Listeners
By Walter de La Mare
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Source: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare (1979)

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Nevertheless
- Poem by Marianne Moore


you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!


Marianne Moore

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

While History's Muse
by Thomas Moore


While History's Muse the memorial was keeping
Of all that the dark hand of Destiny weaves,
Beside her the Genius of Erin stood weeping,
For hers was the story that blotted the leaves.
But oh! how the tear in her eyelids grew bright,
When, after whole pages of sorrow and shame,
She saw History write,
With a pencil of light
That illumed the whole volume, her Wellington's name.

"Yet still the last crown of thy toils is remaining,
The grandest, the purest, even thou hast yet known;
Though proud was thy task, other nations unchaining,
Far prouder to heal the deep wounds of thy own.
At the foot of that throne, for whose weal thou hast stood,
Go, plead for the land that first cradled thy fame,
And, bright o'er the flood
Of her tears, and her blood,
Let the rainbow of Hope be her Wellington's name."

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/har...nman-1929-2008

I love all of Alvin’s poems, but this one in particular, the first poem of his I ever read, is one of my favorites.

November Sunday Morning

And the light, a wakened heyday of air
Tuned low and clear and wide,
A radiance now that would emblaze
And veil the most golden horn
Or any entering of a sudden clearing
To a standing, astonished, revealed…
That the actual streets I loitered in
Lay lit like fields, or narrow channels
About to open to a burning river;
All brick and window vivid and calm
As though composed in a rigid water
No random traffic would dispel…
As now through the park, and across
The chill nailed colors of the roofs,
And on near trees stripped bare,
Corrected in the scant remaining leaf
To their severe essential elegance,
Light is the all-exacting good,
That dry, forever virile stream
That wipes each thing to what it is,
The whole, collage and stone, cleansed
To its proper pastoral…
I sit
And smoke, and linger out desire.

ALVIN FEINMAN
Originally Published: July 14th, 2008

A TRULY MAGNIFICENT POET, ONE DEDICATED TO HIS CRAFT.--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

THE SONG OF A SUMMER.

I PLUCKED an apple from off a tree,
Golden and rosy and fair to see,—
The sunshine had fed it with warmth and light,
The dews had freshened it night by night,
And high on the topmost bough it grew,
Where the winds of Heaven about it blew;
And while the mornings were soft and young
The wild birds circled, and soared, and sung,—
There, in the storm and calm and shine,
It ripened and brightened, this apple of mine,
Till the day I plucked it from off the tree,
Golden and rosy and fair to see.

How could I guess 'neath that daintiest rind
That the core of sweetness I hoped to find—
The innermost, hidden heart of the bliss,
Which dews and winds and the sunshine's kiss
Had tended and fostered by day and night—
Was black with mildew, and bitter with blight;
Golden and rosy and fair of skin,
Nothing but ashes and ruin within?
Ah, never again, with toil and pain,
Will I strive the topmost bough to gain,—
Though its wind-swung apples are fair to see,
On a lower branch is the fruit for me.
By Louise Chandler Moulton
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THE HOUSE OF DEATH.

NOT a hand has lifted the latchet
Since she went out of the door,—
No footstep shall cross the threshold,
Since she can come in no more.
There is rust upon locks and hinges,
And mold and blight on the walls,
And silence faints in the chambers,
And darkness waits in the halls,—
Waits, as all things have waited,
Since she went, that day of spring,
Borne in her pallid splendor,
To dwell in the Court of the King:
With lilies on brow and bosom,
With robes of silken sheen,
And her wonderful frozen beauty
The lilies and silk between.
Red roses she left behind her,
But they died long, long ago,—
'Twas the odorous ghost of a blossom
That seemed through the dusk to glow.

The garments she left mock the shadows
With hints of womanly grace,
And her image swims in the mirror
That was so used to her face.
The birds make insolent music
Where the sunshine riots outside;
And the winds are merry and wanton,
With the summer's pomp and pride.
But into this desolate mansion,
Where Love has closed the door,
Nor sunshine nor summer shall enter,
Since she can come in no more.
By Louise Chandler Moulton

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######
I recently found and bought a book of this magnificent poet's poetry.
This poet was quite famous in her time and now that I've read several dozen of her poems, I see she was a true poet
and a genius at verse, and a very, very intelligent lady.--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.poetseers.org/poets/19th-century-poets/

Poets at Poetseers » 19th Century Poets
19th Century Poets
” I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die. “

– Percy Shelley From: “The Cloud” 1820

The early 19th Century saw the blossoming of the great Romantic poets such as Keats, Shelley and William Wordsworth. In America there was also a powerful movement of poets, loosely termed “Early American Poets” these included Emily Dickinson, Ralph Emerson and Walt Whitman. After the great Romantic poets the next generation of British Poets became associated with the Victorian age. To some extent they offered greater conformity of vision and were more likely to use Christian imagery but they were still influenced by powerful undercurrents of the Romantic movement. In fact the influence of Romanticism can be seen even in modern poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Later poets of the twentieth century also acknowledged the influence of this creative period in poetry.

In India Swami Vivekananda epitomised the revitalisation of Hindu culture. After centuries of decline under Muslim and then British rule Vivekananda powerfully called his countrymen to invoke the ancient universal and eternal ideals of Sanatana Dharma.

British Poets in the 19th Century

Emily Bronte(1818 – 1848)
Elizabeth Browning (1806 – 1861)
Robert Browning(1812-1889)
John Clare (1793 – 1864)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
John Keats (1795 -1821)
Rudyard Kipling
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)
Christina Rossetti (1830 -1894)
Percy Shelley ( 1792 – 1822)
Lord Tennyson (1809 -1892)
William Wordsworth(1770 – 1850)
American Poets in the 19th Century

William Bryant (1794 – 1878 )
Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807 -1882)
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Walt Whitman(1819 – 1892)
Robert Frost (1874-1963
Indian Poets in the 19th Century

Ramakrishna (1836 – 1886)
Swami Vivekananda (1863 – 1902)
Sarojini Naidu (1879 – 1949)
Michael Madhusuda Dutt (b. 1824)
Fikirchand
Sufi Poets in the 19th Century

Bibi Hayati (19th Century)
European Poets

St Teresa of Lisieux (1873-1896)
Romain Rolland (1866-1944)
W.B.Yeats (1865 – 1939)
Oscar Wilde (1855 – 1900)

~

19th Century Poets at Amazon.com

(18th Century Poets) View (20th Century Poets)

Related Categories
British Poets
Victorian Poets
The Romantic Poets
Early American Poets
The Great Poets
(Poetry Categories) (A-Z List of Poets) (Poetry at Amazon.com)

(Poetseers – Poem of the Day)

19th Century Poets at About

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)


Forbearance

(Beareth all things.—1 Cor. xiii. 7.)
Gently I took that which ungently came,
And without scorn forgave :–Do thou the same.
A wrong done to thee think a cat’s-eye spark
Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart dark.
Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin,
Fear that–the spark self-kindled from within,
Which blown upon will blind thee with its glare,
Or smother’d stifle thee with noisome air.
Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds,
And soon the ventilated spirit finds
Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenn’d,
Or worse than foe, an alienated friend,
A rib of dry rot in thy ship’s stout side,
Think it God’s message, and in humble pride
With heart of oak replace it ;–thine the gains–
Give him the rotten timber for his pains !
By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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To Nature

It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be ; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice

By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Oak In Autumn
-- Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney

Old oak! old oak! the chosen one,
Round whkh my poet's mesh I twine,
When rosy wakes the joyous sun,
Or, wearied, sinks at day's decline,
I see the frost-king here and there,
Claim some brown leaflet for his own,
Or point in cold derision where
He soon shall rear the usurper's throne.
Too soon! too soon! in crimson bright,
Vain mockery of thy woe, he'll flout,
And proudly climb thy topmost height,
To hang his flaunting signal out;
While thou, as round thine honours fall,
Shalt stand with seam'd and naked bark,
Like banner-staff, so lone and tall,
His ruthless victory to mark.
1, too, old friend, when thou art gone,
Must pensive to my casement go,
Or 1ike the shuddering Druid, moan
The withering of his mistletoe;
But when young Spring, with matin clear,
Awakes the bird, the stream, the tree,
Fain would I at her call appear,
And hang my slender wreath on thee.

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

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Indian Names
-- BY LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY
‘How can the red men be forgotten, while so many of our states and territories, bays, lakes, and rivers, are indelibly stamped by names of their giving?’
Ye say they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave;
That ’mid the forests where they roamed
There rings no hunter shout,
But their name is on your waters,
Ye may not wash it out.

’Tis where Ontario’s billow
Like Ocean’s surge is curled,
Where strong Niagara’s thunders wake
The echo of the world.
Where red Missouri bringeth
Rich tribute from the west,
And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps
On green Virginia’s breast.

Ye say their cone-like cabins,
That clustered o’er the vale,
Have fled away like withered leaves
Before the autumn gale,
But their memory liveth on your hills,
Their baptism on your shore,
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore.

Old Massachusetts wears it,
Within her lordly crown,
And broad Ohio bears it,
Amid his young renown;
Connecticut hath wreathed it
Where her quiet foliage waves,
And bold Kentucky breathed it hoarse
Through all her ancient caves.

Wachuset hides its lingering voice
Within his rocky heart,
And Alleghany graves its tone
Throughout his lofty chart;
Monadnock on his forehead hoar
Doth seal the sacred trust,
Your mountains build their monument,
Though ye destroy their dust.

Ye call these red-browned brethren
The insects of an hour,
Crushed like the noteless worm amid
The regions of their power;
Ye drive them from their father’s lands,
Ye break of faith the seal,
But can ye from the court of Heaven
Exclude their last appeal?

Ye see their unresisting tribes,
With toilsome step and slow,
On through the trackless desert pass
A caravan of woe;
Think ye the Eternal’s ear is deaf?
His sleepless vision dim?
Think ye the soul’s blood may not cry
From that far land to him?

Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997)