#WingedWordsWindsday: A Garland of Poems for the Winter Solstice

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 8: December 22, 2021

 

 

A Garland of Poems for the Winter Solstice

Tuesday, December 21, 2021 @ 9:59 AM (CST)

 

Orphic Hymn #79: “To the North Wind”

Translated by Thomas Taylor (1758-1835)

Boreas, whose wintry blasts, terrific, tear

The bosom of the deep surrounding air;

Cold icy power, approach, and favoring blow,

And Thrace a while desert exposed to snow:

The misty station of the air dissolve,

With pregnant clouds, whose frames in showers resolve:

Serenely temper all within the sky,

And wipe from moisture, Aether's beauteous eye.

 

“Hymn to the North Star”

By William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)

 

The sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;

The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires:

All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and round the heavens, and go.

 

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:

Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,

Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

 

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.

Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep’st thy old unmoving station yet,

Nor join’st the dances of that glittering train,

Nor dipp’st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

 

There, at morn’s rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

And eve, that round the Earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls

The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven’s azure walls.

 

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze — the smoke of battle blots the Sun —

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud —

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

 

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

 

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,

That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

 

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

 

“Woods in Winter”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

When winter winds are piercing chill,

  And through the hawthorn blows the gale,

With solemn feet I tread the hill,

  That overbrows the lonely vale.

 

O'er the bare upland, and away

  Through the long reach of desert woods,

The embracing sunbeams chastely play,

  And gladden these deep solitudes.

 

Where, twisted round the barren oak,

  The summer vine in beauty clung,

And summer winds the stillness broke,

  The crystal icicle is hung.

 

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs

  Pour out the river's gradual tide,

Shrilly the skater's iron rings,

  And voices fill the woodland side.

 

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,

  When birds sang out their mellow lay,

And winds were soft, and woods were green,

  And the song ceased not with the day!

 

But still wild music is abroad,

  Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;

And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,

  Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

 

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear

  Has grown familiar with your song;

I hear it in the opening year,

  I listen, and it cheers me long.

 

“Songs of Winter Days: IV”

By George MacDonald (1824-1905)

 

A morning clear, with frosty light

From sunbeams late and low;

They shine upon the snow so white,

And shine back from the snow.

 

Down tusks of ice one drop will go,

Nor fall: at sunny noon

‘Twill hang a diamond-fade, and grow

An opal for the Moon.

 

And when the bright sad Sun is low

Behind the mountain-dome,

A twilight wind will come and blow

Around the children’s home,

 

And puff and waft the powdery snow,

As feet unseen did pass;

While, waiting in its bed below,

Green lies the summer grass.

 

“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?

 

Sonnet #13: “Hesperia”

(Excerpted from Fungi from Yuggoth)

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

 

The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires

And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,

Opens great gates to some forgotten year

Of elder splendors and divine desires.

Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,

Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;

A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear

Toward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.

It is the land where beauty’s meaning flowers;

Where every unplaced memory has a source;

Where the great river Time begins its course

Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.

Dreams bring us close — but ancient lore repeats

That human tread has never soiled these streets.