Poems for Lent Nos 21 - 25

Lenten Poetry Challenge

Saturday Lent Poem 25 

The Happiest Day

Edgar Allan Poe 1827

 

    I.       The happiest day--the happiest hour
                My seared and blighted heart hath known,
              The highest hope of pride and power,
                I feel hath flown.

     II.      Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween
                But they have vanished long, alas!
              The visions of my youth have been--
                But let them pass.

     III.     And pride, what have I now with thee?
                Another brow may ev'n inherit
              The venom thou hast poured on me--
                Be still my spirit!

     IV.      The happiest day--the happiest hour
                Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen
              The brightest glance of pride and power
                I feel have been:

     V.       But were that hope of pride and power
                Now offered with the pain
              Ev'n _then_ I felt--that brightest hour
                I would not live again:

     VI.      For on its wing was dark alloy
                And as it fluttered--fell
              An essence--powerful to destroy
                A soul that knew it well.

 

Friday Lent Poem 24 

Ode to Autumn

John Keats 1819

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-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed 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'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

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-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed 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 cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Thursday Lent Poem 23 

Song: Go and Catch A Falling Star

John Donne 1633

GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

Wednesday Lent Poem 22 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost 1922

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Tuesday Lent Poem 21 

The Thought Fox

Ted Hughes 1957

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Lenten Poetry Challenge

Lenten Poetry - 12 - Desire - Alice Shapiro

Lenten Poetry - 11 - Well Done - Alice Shapiro

Lenten Poetry - 10 - Resurrection - Vladimir Holan

Lenten Poetry - 09 - Poems 41 - 44

Lenten Poetry - 08 - Poems 36 - 40

Lenten Poetry - 07 - Poems 31 - 35

Lenten Poetry - 06 - Poems 26 - 30

Lenten Poetry - 04 - Poems 16 - 20

Lenten Poetry - 03 - Poems 11 - 15

Lenten Poetry - 02 - Poems 06 - 10

Lenten Poetry - 01 - Poems 01 - 05

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