Late Autumn
October - and the skies are cool and gray
O'er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf,
Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf.
The dignity of woods in rich decay
Accords full well with this majestic grief
That clothes our solemn purple hills to-day,
Whose afternoon is hush'd, and wintry brief
Only a robin sings from any spray.
And night sends up her pale cold moon, and spills
White mist around the hollows of the hills,
Phantoms of firth or lake; the peasant sees
His cot and stockyard, with the homestead trees,
Islanded; but no foolish terror thrills
His perfect harvesting; he sleeps at ease.
poem by William Allingham
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Over The Hills
The old hound wags his shaggy tail,
And I know what he would say:
It's over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
Over the hills, and away.
There's nought for us here save to count the clock,
And hang the head all day:
But over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
Over the hills and away.
Here among men we're like the deer
That yonder is our prey:
So, over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
Over the hills and away.
The hypocrite is master here,
But he's the cock of clay:
So, over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
Over the hills and away.
The women, they shall sigh and smile,
And madden whom they may:
It's over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
Over the hills and away.
Let silly lads in couples run
To pleasure, a wicked fay:
'Tis ours on the heather to bound, old hound,
Over the hills and away.
The torrent glints under the rowan red,
And shakes the bracken spray:
What joy on the heather to bound, old hound,
Over the hills and away.
The sun bursts broad, and the heathery bed
Is purple, and orange, and gray:
Away, and away, we'll bound, old hound,
Over the hills and away.
poem by George Meredith
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A Showery October Afternoon
It is a showery afternoon water drips from the trees
But it's not cold a mild Spring day perhaps twenty degrees
In late October in the hills you do get days like these
When morning sun give way to showers though cool enough the breeze.
The black faced cuckoo shrike is back from places far away
A bird you never can mistake in cloak of silver gray
And in the wood the high pitched voice of the gray currawong
These birds you come to recognize by their distinctive song.
On the high gum tree in their nest young magpies chirp and call
And October in the Dandenongs the loveliest month of all
The high paddocks of Belgrave South are looking lush and green
And Mother Nature beautiful as lovely as I've seen.
The migratory welcome swallows back in the hills again
They fly low o'er the paddocks the flies are low in rain
My favourite Season of the year has always been the Spring
In storm and rain and sunshine the wild birds chirp and sing
This morning pretty butterflies flitted around the flowers
But the afternoon turned cloudy and sun gave way to showers
In October in the Dandenongs you do get days like these
A day of showers and sun shine water dripping off the trees.
poem by Francis Duggan
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October Musings, 1866
Silent, grave, subdued, and sober,
Month beloved, my own October!
Resting in thy peaceful arms,
Seeing not, I feel thy charms-
Feel upon my withered cheek
Thy gentle breath, thy whispers meek;
Tell of Autumn's latest sheaves,
Songless woods, and falling leaves-
Nature's floral wreath despoiled;
Hueless, scentless, matted, soiled,
Fall her tresses thin and gray,
Bending to October's sway.
Summer sun with thirsty beams
Drinking dry the pools and streams:
Where thy fervid glories now,
The burning splendours of thy brow?
Veiled effulgence now is thine,
Tender radiance, half divine;
This dreamy quiet, this stilly calm,
Sheds around a soothing balm.
Hushed beneath the influence mild,
My soul is like a weanèd child-
Weaned from earth's low cares and joys,
Vain pursuits, and worthless toys.
Life's short race is nearly run,
And the goal will soon be won;
Still I bear in heart and mind
The wants and sufferings of my kind.
Sad, yet sweet, to moralise
'Neath October's solemn skies,
When the finger of decay
Points the year's declining day;
Like the hand upon the wall,
'Born to die,' inscribes on all:
Flowers decayed and earth defiled,
Where of late they bloomed and smiled;
Fields and wood's dim, bare, and gray,
In every aspect of decay,
Tell me that I too must die-
In cold decay and darkness lie,
Till He, whose name I love and trust,
Shall wake to life my sleeping dust.
poem by Janet Hamilton
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In November (1)
The leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
Now golden-gray, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.
Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintry white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor gray,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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The Simple life I live
An afternoon walk
Seeing the white birds again
On these green ricefields
And the carabaos wallowing
Refreshing their skins in mud holes
It is the beginning of the
Planting season again
The weeds are uprooted
The plows run again
To make this land arable
The rain comes and too
The sun and the wind
The hills are greener
The trees are blooming
And so are the flowers
Along the footpaths
My dog walks with me
And his friend dog too walks with us
The wind so cool touches my face
The man nearby pastures his carabao
The woman washes some clothes in the river
The waters are still clear reflecting bluer skies
There are no sounds of buses in here
Far from the city in this little village
Where people are still innocent about greed
And grief and self-made confusions
The complications, the sophistications
I can live on a cup of rice, this mudfish,
This glass of water from the rock’s spring
This big banana leaf on my head
And the moon above everything else
And some stars lighting this lovely darkness
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Mirror Of Diana
Popular Name for Lake Nemi.
SHE floats into the quiet skies,
Where, in the circle of hills,
Her immemorial mirror fills
With light, as of a Virgin's eyes
When, love a-tremble in their blue,
They glow twin violets dipped in dew.
Mild as a metaphor of Sleep,
Immaculately maiden-white,
The Queen Moon of ancestral night
Beholds her image in the deep:
As if a-gaze she beams above
Lake Nemi's magic glass of love.
White rose, white lily of the vale,
Perfume the even breath of night;
In many a burst of sweet delight
The love throb of the nightingale
Swells through lush flowering woods and fills
The circle of the listening hills.
White rose, white lily of the skies,
The Moon-flower blossoms in the lake;
The nightingale for her fair sake
With hopeless love's impassioned cries
Seems fain to sing till song must kill
Himself with one tumultuous trill.
And all the songs and all the scents,
The light of glowworms and the fires
Of fire-flies in the cypress spires;
And all the wild wind instruments
Of pine and ilex as the breeze
Sweeps out their mystic harmonies;--
All are but Messengers of May
To that white orb of maiden fire
Who fills the moth with mad desire
To die enamoured in her ray,
And turns each dewdrop in the grass
Into a fairy looking-glass.
O Beauty, far and far above
The night moth and the nightingale!
Far, far above life's narrow pale,
O Unattainable! O Love!
Even as the nightingale we cry
For some Ideal set on high.
Haunting the deep reflective mind,
You may surprise its perfect Sphere
Glassed like the Moon within her mere,
Who at a puff of alien wind
Melts in innumerable rings,
Elusive in the flux of things.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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The Moon Flower
I know a valley- through its solitude
A brown road winds towards a mountain crest;
There gnarly ti-trees dripping sweetness rest,
And grasses bend, too heavily bedowed.
In that still valley by the still lagoon,
A ruined homestead for her secret shrine,
Dwells Beauty's self, half-earthly, half-devine-
Thrilling, I saw her waken to the moon.
In peaks of emerald the cactus crept,
And there o'er rafters falling to decay,
A miracle of flowers, spray on spray,
Burst into perfect life while nature slept.
First a slim silver riband from the sky
Uncurled green fronds from each imprisoned bud,
Then, one by one, bathed in the beaming flood,
Like ghost-notes in a spirit litany.
They blossomed out before my eyes,
Great chalices of snow filled up with light;
Set in the mystic radiance of night
They seemed a vision from immortal skies.
Hidden in shadow near the still lagoon
Nightly I worship at a secret shrine,
There on a ruin- lily-white, devine,
Is beauty lying naked to the moon!
poem by Lala Fisher
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Oahu
Here on this island, summer never sleeps.
In the green valleys, smoke in cane-time drifts
With mist—frail tide that laps the chasmed deeps
Between the steep clean hills as the sea-tide
Once washed the silent hidden hollow rifts
And unseen valleys of its unborn bride.
Sea-bride, child of earth’s red molten womb,
Daughter of fire and chaos long since sleeping,
Who were the people that made your green hills bloom?
Wedded to the seas they were, like you;
From the dark sea, while you your watch were keeping,
They came to make their destined rendezvous.
The broad bare feet step forth on virgin sand,
And eyes raise to the green eternal hills:
Gray mist, green hills and fertile red-clay land,
Alone no more. The carefree caroling laughter
Drifts inland, where valley mist distills
The songs that shall be sung forever after.
poem by S.J. Fulton
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Autumnale for M lady ernestine
The falling leaves dance in the breeze
and clothe the ground beneath the trees,
in autumn colours rich a rare.
The trees themselves will soon be bare.
Left no defence against the wind.
Their winter plans are well designed,
bare twigs and branches hold less snow
than useless leaves they have let go
The wintry gales to no avail
try hard but they are doomed to fail,
They can’t destroy the sturdy trees;
resisting with apparent ease.
Although they bow before the blast
they know that winter cannot last
The winds will die and fade away
the trees will they’re here to stay.
Spring will return the trees will green
as if the winter had not been.
The trees put on their new spring clothes
along with every plant that grows.
8-Oct-08
http: // blog.myspace.com/poeticpiers
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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The Mirror
Between the woods the afternoon
Its fallen in a golden swoon,
The sun looks down from quiet skies
To where a quiet water lies,
And silent trees stoop down to the trees.
And there I saw a white swan make
Another white swan in the lake;
And, breast to breast, both motionless,
They waited for the wind's caress. . .
And all the water was at ease.
poem by Alan Alexander Milne
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A Portrait
LIKE the sway of the silver birch in the breeze of dawn
Is her dainty way;
Like the gray of a twilight sky or a starlit lawn
Are her eyes of gray;
Like the clouds in their moving white
Is her breast's soft stir;
And white as the moon and bright
Is the soul of her.
Like murmur of woods in spring ere the leaves be green,
Like the voice of a bird
That sings by a stream that sings through the night unseen,
So her voice is heard.
And the secret her eyes withhold
In my soul abides,
For white as the moon and cold
Is the heart she hides.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Summer Song
THERE are white moon daisies in the mist of the meadow
Where the flowered grass scatters its seeds like spray,
There are purple orchis by the wood-ways' shadow,
There are pale dog-roses by the white highway;
And the grass, the grass is tall, the grass is up for hay,
With daisies white like silver and buttercups like gold,
And it's oh! for once to play thro' the long, the lovely day,
To laugh before the year grows old!
There is silver moonlight on the breast of the river
Where the willows tremble to the kiss of night,
Where the nine tall aspens in the meadow shiver,
Shiver in the night wind that turns them white.
And the lamps, the lamps are lit, the lamps are glow-worms light,
Between the silver aspens and the west's last gold.
And it's oh! to drink delight in the lovely lonely night,
To be young before the heart grows old!
poem by Edith Nesbit
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After Prayers, Lie Cold
Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush'd mortal, in the sacred night,
-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup
Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,
Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness
By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.
Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent
To weariness' and pardon's watery element.
Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;
Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.
poem by Clive Staples Lewis
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In Eclipse
PALE veil of mist bound round the trees
Pale fringe of rain upon the hills,
Cold earth, cold sky and biting breeze
That mock the withered daffodils.
And yet so short a while ago,
The sunlight on the quickened land
Laughed at the memory of the snow,
And we went hand in hand.
Pale veil of doubt wound round my heart,
Pale fringe of tears upon your eyes;
Why did we choose the evil part?
Why did we leave our Paradise?
There were such green and pleasant ways
Where you and I with happy heart
Laughed at the old unhappy days,
And now--we are apart.
Will the sun shine again some day?
Will you forgive me and forget?
Chill is the east, the west is gray,
And all our world with tears is wet.
Ah! love, the world is wide and cold,
The weary skies are wild with rain;
Give me at least your hand to hold
Till the sun shines again.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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My Baby Sleeps
The wind is loud in the west to-night,
But Baby sleeps;
The wild wind blows with all its might,
But Baby sleeps;
My Baby sleeps, and he does not hear
The noise of the storm in the pine trees near.
The snow is drifting high to-night,
But Baby sleeps;
The bitter world is cold and white,
But Baby sleeps;
My Baby sleeps, so fast, so fast,
That he does not heed the wintry blast.
The cold snows drift, and the wild winds rave,
But Baby sleeps;
And a white cross stands by his little grave,
While Baby sleeps;
And the storm is loud in the rocking pine,
But its moan is not so deep as mine.
poem by George A. Mackenzie
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The Heavenly Hills of Holland
The heavenly hills of Holland,--
How wondrously they rise
Above the smooth green pastures
Into the azure skies!
With blue and purple hollows,
With peaks of dazzling snow,
Along the far horizon
The clouds are marching slow.
No mortal foot has trodden
The summits of that range,
Nor walked those mystic valleys
Whose colors ever change;
Yet we possess their beauty,
And visit them in dreams,
While the ruddy gold of sunset
From cliff and canyon gleams.
In days of cloudless weather
They melt into the light;
When fog and mist surround us
They're hidden from our sight;
But when returns a season
Clear shining after rain,
While the northwest wind is blowing,
We see the hills again.
The old Dutch painters loved them,
Their pictures show them clear,
Old Hobbema and Ruysdael,
Van Goyen and Vermeer.
Above the level landscape,
Rich polders, long-armed mills,
Canals and ancient cities,--
Float Holland's heavenly hills.
poem by Henry Van Dyke
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Endymion
THE apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,
The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me.
O rising moon! O Lady moon!
Be you my lover's sentinel,
You cannot choose but know him well,
For he is shod with purple shoon,
You cannot choose but know my love,
For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,
And he is soft as any dove,
And brown and curly is his hair.
The turtle now has ceased to call
Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The grey wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily's singing seneschal
Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all
The violet hills are lost in gloom.
O risen moon! O holy moon!
Stand on the top of Helice,
And if my own true love you see,
Ah! if you see the purple shoon,
The hazel crook, the lad's brown hair,
The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,
Tell him that I am waiting where
The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.
The falling dew is cold and chill,
And no bird sings in Arcady,
The little fauns have left the hill,
Even the tired daffodil
Has closed its gilded doors, and still
My lover comes not back to me.
False moon! False moon! O waning moon!
Where is my own true lover gone,
Where are the lips vermilion,
The shepherd's crook, the purple shoon?
Why spread that silver pavilion,
Why wear that veil of drifting mist?
Ah! thou hast young Endymion,
Thou hast the lips that should be kissed!
poem by Oscar Wilde
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Wish I Were Born in Beverly Hills
She looked so sleek and sassy
Rolling down Rodeo Drive
She got her daddy's black Corniche
And her tennis pro by her side
And she wants her mother's lover
To exercise her skill
And if she don't score him fast
She knows that her brother will
Oh I wish I were born in Beverly Hills
I swear I couldn't drink half as much as she spills
I want to live it up get my kicks and thrills
Be a gigolo lover and send her the bills
She says that she's an actress
Just never got a part
Now she's a teenage mess
With a burned out Gucci heart
She cracked one day at Cartier
When things came to a head
They put her trinkets away
And wrapped her up instead
Oh I wish I were born in Beverly Hills
I swear I couldn't drink half as much as she spills
I want to live it up get my kicks and thrills
Be a gigolo lover and send her the bills
She bit like a dog and she screamed like hell
"You ain't taking me to no padded cell
You better take all your hands off my high priced tail"
Oh I wish I were born in Beverly Hills
I swear I couldn't drink half as much as she spills
I want to live it up get my kicks and thrills
Be a gigolo lover and send her the bills
song performed by by Alice Cooper, music by Alice Cooper, Bernie Taupin, Dick Wagner
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Rondel of Gloucestershire
Big glory mellowing on the mellowing hills,
And in the Uttle valleys, thatch and dreams,
Wrought by the manifold and vagrant wills
Of sun and ripening rain and wind ; so gleams
My country, that great magic cup which spills
Into my mind a thousand thousand streams
Of glory mellowing on the mellowing hills
And in the httle valleys, thatch and dreams.
O you dear heights of blue no ploughman tiUs,
O valleys where the curling mist upsteams
White over fields of trembhng daffodils.
And you old dusty little water-mills.
Through all my life, for joy of you, sweet thrills
Shook me, and in my death at last there beams
Big glory mellowing on the mellowing hills
And in the Uttle valleys, thatch and dreams.
poem by Frederick William Harvey
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Sunset On The Bearcamp
A gold fringe on the purpling hem
Of hills the river runs,
As down its long, green valley falls
The last of summer's suns.
Along its tawny gravel-bed
Broad-flowing, swift, and still,
As if its meadow levels felt
The hurry of the hill,
Noiseless between its banks of green
From curve to curve it slips;
The drowsy maple-shadows rest
Like fingers on its lips.
A waif from Carroll's wildest hills,
Unstoried and unknown;
The ursine legend of its name
Prowls on its banks alone.
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn
As ever Yarrow knew,
Or, under rainy Irish skies,
By Spenser's Mulla grew;
And through the gaps of leaning trees
Its mountain cradle shows
The gold against the amethyst,
The green against the rose.
Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
Of all its elms is twirled
The silence of eternity
Seems falling on the world.
The pause before the breaking seals
Of mystery is this;
Yon miracle-play of night and day
Makes dumb its witnesses.
What unseen altar crowns the hills
That reach up stair on stair?
What eyes look through, what white wings fan
These purple veils of air?
What Presence from the heavenly heights
To those of earth stoops down?
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods
On Ida's snowy crown!
Slow fades the vision of the sky,
The golden water pales,
And over all the valley-land
A gray-winged vapor sails.
I go the common way of all;
The sunset fires will burn,
The flowers will blow, the river flow,
When I no more return.
No whisper from the mountain pine
Nor lapsing stream shall tell
The stranger, treading where I tread,
Of him who loved them well.
But beauty seen is never lost,
God's colors all are fast;
The glory of this sunset heaven
Into my soul has passed,
A sense of gladness unconfined
To mortal date or clime;
As the soul liveth, it shall live
Beyond the years of time.
Beside the mystic asphodels
Shall bloom the home-born flowers,
And new horizons flush and glow
With sunset hues of ours.
Farewell! these smiling hills must wear
Too soon their wintry frown,
And snow-cold winds from off them shake
The maple's red leaves down.
But I shall see a summer sun
Still setting broad and low;
The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,
The golden water flow.
A lover's claim is mine on all
I see to have and hold,--
The rose-light of perpetual hills,
And sunsets never cold!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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