#WingedWordsWindsday: A Trio of Halloween Poems

 

WINGED WORDS WEDNESDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 0, No. 0: October 27, 2021

 

Above: Wednesday is named after the planet Mercury in Latin and in its descendants, the Romance languages. This woodcut of the personified planet Mercury, holding his winged staff (the caduceus), was created by the German Renaissance astronomer Johannes Regiomontanus (1436-1476).

Poems to Celebrate the Halloween Season

 

“Dusk in Autumn”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

 

The Moon is like a scimitar,

A little silver scimitar,

A-drifting down the sky.

And near beside it is a star,

A timid twinkling golden star,

That watches like an eye.

 

And through the nursery window-pane

The witches have a fire again,

Just like the ones we make, —

And now I know they’re having tea,

I wish they’d give a cup to me,

With witches’ currant cake.

 

“Eldorado”

By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

 

Gaily bedight, a gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long, singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

 

But he grew old — this knight so bold —

And o’er his heart a shadow —

Fell as he found no spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

 

And, as his strength failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow —

“Shadow,” said he, “Where can it be —

This land of Eldorado?”

 

 “Over the Mountains of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,” the shade replied, —

“If you seek for Eldorado!”

 

“The Kraken”

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides; above him swell

Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,

From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

Unnumbered and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

 

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie

Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

The constellation Cetus (the Sea-Dragon or Kraken) is visible from the American Midwest in the southern sky on autumn evenings. (Image Credit: Samuel Leigh [1824] – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)