#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/12/21 -- Poems for the Longest Night

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 8: December 21, 2022

 

 

A Garland of Poems for the Winter Solstice

Wednesday, December 21, 2022 @ 3:48 PM (CST)

 

“The Four Seasons of the Year: Winter”

By Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

 

Cold, moist, young phlegmy winter now doth lie

In swaddling Clothes, like newborn Infancy

Bound up with frosts, and furred with hail & snows,

And like an Infant, still it taller grows;

December is my first, and now the Sun

To the Southward Tropic, his swift race doth run:

This month he's housed in horned Capricorn,

From thence he 'gins to length the shortened morn,

Through Christendom with great Festivity,

Now's held, (but guest) for blest Nativity.

Cold frozen January next comes in,

Chilling the blood and shrinking up the skin;

In Aquarius now keeps the long-wished Sun,

And Northward his unwearied Course doth run:

The day much longer than it was before,

The cold not lessened, but augmented more.

Now Toes and Ears, and Fingers often freeze,

And Travelers their noses sometimes leese.

Moist snowy February is my last,

I care not how the wintertime doth haste.

In Pisces now the golden Sun doth shine,

And Northward still approaches to the Line,

The Rivers 'gin to open, the snows to melt,

And some warm glances from his face are felt;

Which is increased by the lengthened day,

Until by his heat, he drive all cold away,

And thus the year in Circle runneth round:

Where first it did begin, in the end its found.

My Subject’s bare, my Brain is bad,

Or better Lines you should have had:

The first fell in so naturally,

I knew not how to pass it by;

The last, though bad I could not mend,

Accept therefore of what is penned,

And all the faults that you shall spy

Shall at your feet for pardon cry.

 

“The Light of Stars (A Second Psalm of Life)”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Editor’s Note: The red planet Mars is very prominent in the winter sky right now, rising in the east just before sunset and staying visible for most of the night. Right now, Mars can be found amid the stars of Taurus, the Bull, near the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters.

 

The night is come, but not too soon;

And sinking silently,

All silently, the little moon

Drops down behind the sky.

 

There is no light in earth or heaven

But the cold light of stars;

And the first watch of night is given

To the red planet Mars.

 

Is it the tender star of love?

The star of love and dreams?

Oh no! from that blue tent above

A hero's armor gleams.

 

And earnest thoughts within me rise,

When I behold afar,

Suspended in the evening skies,

The shield of that red star.

 

O star of strength! I see thee stand

And smile upon my pain;

Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,

And I am strong again.

 

Within my breast there is no light

But the cold light of stars;

I give the first watch of the night

To the red planet Mars.

 

The star of the unconquered will,

He rises in my breast,

Serene, and resolute, and still,

And calm, and self-possessed.

 

And thou, too, whosoever thou art,

That readest this brief psalm,

As one by one thy hopes depart,

Be resolute and calm.

 

Oh, fear not in a world like this,

And thou shalt know erelong,

Know how sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.

 

The planet Mars, as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain)

 

“Welcome to the Sun”

Anonymous – Collected in Scotland (19th Century)

Editor’s Note: In the Germanic, Keltik, and Slavic languages – as well as in Japanese – the Sun is feminine, and the Moon is masculine.

 

Welcome to you, Sun of the seasons’ turning,

In your circuit of the high heavens;

Strong are your steps on the unfurled heights,

Glad Mother are you to the constellations.

 

You sink down into the ocean of want,

Without defeat, without scathe;

You rise up on the peaceful wave

Like a Queen in her maidenhood's flower.

 

“Up and Down”

By George MacDonald (1824-1905)

Excerpted from At the Back of the North Wind (1871) – Chapter 37

 

The Sun is gone down,

And the Moon’s in the sky;

But the Sun will come up,

And the Moon be laid by.

 

The flower is asleep,

But it is not dead;

When the morning shines,

It will lift its head.

 

When winter comes,

It will die – no, no;

It will only hide

From the frost and the snow.

 

Sure is the summer,

Sure is the Sun;

The night and the winter

Are shadows that run.

 

“A Calendar of Sonnets: December”

By Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

 

The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes

Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed:

Far fairer than when placidly it streamed,

The brook its frozen architecture makes,

And under bridges white its swift way takes.

Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed

Might linger on the road; or one who deemed

His message hostile gently for their sakes

Who listened might reveal it by degrees.

We gird against the cold of winter wind

Our loins now with mighty bands of sleep,

In longest, darkest nights take rest and ease,

And every shortening day, as shadows creep

O'er the brief noontide, fresh surprises find.

 

“Picture-Books in Winter”

(Excerpted from A Child’s Garden of Verses)

By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

 

Summer fading, winter comes —

Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,

Window robins, winter rooks,

And the picture story-books.

 

Water now is turned to stone

Nurse and I can walk upon;

Still we find the flowing brooks

In the picture story-books.

 

All the pretty things put by,

Wait upon the children’s eye,

Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,

In the picture story-books.

 

We may see how all things are

Seas and cities, near and far,

And the flying fairies’ looks,

In the picture story-books.

 

How am I to sing your praise,

Happy chimney-corner days,

Sitting safe in nursery nooks,

Reading picture story-books?

 

“Polaris”

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

 

Slumber, watcher, till the spheres,

Six and twenty thousand years

Have revolved, and I return

To the spot where now I burn.

Other stars anon shall rise

To the axis of the skies;

Stars that soothe and stars that bless

With a sweet forgetfulness:

Only when my round is o’er

Shall the past disturb thy door.

 

Polaris, the North Star, is always positioned overhead at the Earth’s North Pole. (Photo Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute – Public Domain)