#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/10/12 -- A Quintet of October Poems!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 50: October 12, 2022

 

A Quintet of October Poems!

 

“October's Bright Blue Weather”

By Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

 

O suns and skies and clouds of June,

And flowers of June together,

Ye cannot rival for one hour

October’s bright blue weather!

 

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,

Belated, thriftless vagrant,

And Golden-Rod is dying fast,

And lanes with grapes are fragrant.

 

When Gentians roll their fringes tight

To save them for the morning,

And chestnuts fall from satin burrs

Without a sound of warning.

 

When on the ground red apples lie

In piles like jewels shining,

And redder still on old stone walls

Are leaves of woodbine twining.

 

When all the lovely wayside things

Their white-winged seeds are sowing,

And in the fields, still green and fair,

Late aftermaths are growing.

 

When springs run low, and on the brooks,

In idle golden freighting,

Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush

Of woods, for winter waiting.

 

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,

By twos and twos together,

And count like misers, hour by hour,

October’s bright blue weather.

 

O suns and skies and flowers of June,

Count all your boasts together;

Love loveth best of all the year

October’s bright blue weather!

 

“A Calendar of Sonnets: October”

By Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

 

The month of carnival of all the year,

When Nature lets the wild earth go its way,

And spend whole seasons on a single day.

The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;

October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;

The summer charily her reds doth lay

Like jewels on her costliest array;

October, scornful, burns them on a bier.

The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign

Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,

Or empress wore, in Egypt's ancient line,

October, feasting 'neath her dome of blue,

Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through

Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!

 

“When the Frost Is on the Punkin”

By James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)

 

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and the gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,

And the clackin'; of the guineys and the cluckin' of the hens

And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O it's then the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best,

With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock

 

They's somethin kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here -

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees

And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;

But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny monring of the airly autumn days

Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock -

When the frost is on the punkin and fodder's in the shock.

 

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,

And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;

The stubble in the furries - kindo' lonesome-like, but still

A preachin' sermons to us of the barns they growed to fill;

The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;

The hosses in theyr stalls below - the clover overhead! -

O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

 

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps

Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;

And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through

With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage, too!

I don't know how to tell it - but if sich a thing could be

As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me -

I'd want to 'commodate 'em - all the whole-indurin' flock -

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

 

October, from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a 15^th-century book of hours. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“In October”

By Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

 

Now come the rosy dogwoods,

The golden tulip-tree,

And the scarlet yellow maple,

To make a day for me.

 

The ash-trees on the ridges,

The alders in the swamp,

Put on their red and purple

To join the autumn pomp.

 

The woodbine hangs her crimson

Along the pasture wall,

And all the bannered sumacs

Have heard the frosty call.

 

Who then so dead to valor

As not to raise a cheer,

When all the woods are marching

In triumph of the year?

 

“October”

By Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914)

 

Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows

A tourney-trumpet on the listed hill;

Past is the splendour of the royal rose

And duchess daffodil.

 

Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,

Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,

A ragged beggar with a lovely face,

Reigns the sad marigold.

 

And I have sought June's butterfly for days,

To find it—like a coreopsis bloom—

Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze

Of this sunflower's plume.

 

Here drones the bee; and there sky-daring wings

Voyage blue gulfs of heaven; the last song

The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings

Upon yon pear-tree's prong.

 

No angry sunset brims with rubier red

The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,

Pour in each blossom of this salvia-bed,

Where each leaf seems to bleed.

 

And where the wood-gnats dance, like some slight mist,

Above the efforts of the weedy stream,

The girl, October, tired of the tryst,

Dreams a diviner dream.

 

One foot just dipping the caressing wave,

One knee at languid angle; locks that drown

Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave,

Watching the leaves drift down.