A Leap-Year Tragedy by William Montague Whitney

To spoon when a widow is willing is nice,
If nothing but spooning’s intended;
But the new summer-boarder alarms me—a vice
Is often a virtue suspended.
Her complexion is essence of Midnight and Noon,
And her eyes are as soft as the light o’ the moon;
In a word, she is sweeter than mulberry jam—
But her stockings are cotton—and mended;
I’m certain her stockings are mended.

We walked by the elms till the dinner-bell rang,
And once I began to say “Lily …”
When a little bird hopped on my elbow and sang,
“Beware, it is leap year, you silly!”
She vowed it is monstrous for men to oppose
The impulse of women—the right to propose!
But I thought I detected the fly in the jam,
And the air in the garden was chilly;
I said, “I am sure you are chilly!”

Said she, “Not at all, it is lovely, asthore,
But I fear we are keeping the dinner;
Come out after tea!” … but I fled at the door
And cursed her, as I am a sinner!
Her conduct at breakfast was simply insane.
I frowned and she simpered—her meaning was plain—
But although I’m convinced that the goddess is sham,
I daily grow visibly thinner—
I’m certainly visibly thinner!

The sting of the thing is I’m madly in love
With the landlady’s dear little daughter.
She looks at me shyly, demure as a dove,
And pledges my health in cold water;
She said “I am sure she is perfectly sweet,
Perhaps a bit vain, but so quaintly discreet!”
But she fled like a doe when I muttered “ Oh, Damn.”
So I kissed her five times when I caught her;
On the stairs I was waiting, and caught her.

Now what in the world may a modest man do?
My troubles are full and they’re plenty!
If I stay she will harry me, marry me, too,
If I go who will kiss Sweet-and-Twenty?
’Tis pleasant to flirt with a damsel in spring,
But a lone little widow’s a dangerous thing!
And in spite of the kiss in the garden I am
Determined to wed Sweet-and-Twenty—
I will marry you now, Sweet-and-Twenty!

From: Whitney, W. M., “A Leap-Year Tragedy” in The Bulletin, Volume 30, Number 1542 (2 September 1909), p. 40.
(https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-638412684/view?partId=nla.obj-638427442#page/n41/mode/1up

Date: 1909

By: William Montague Whitney (1866-1948)

February by Sydney Elliott Napier

The scorpion summer—ev’ry burnish’d scale
Aflame with mortal agony and hate—
Crawls, blind and frenzied, to his venom’d fate
And stabs his life out with his armèd tail!
The sun is brazen and the skies are mail;
The airy argosies bear dusty freight;
And, see! The witches of the wind gyrate
O’er that which, once so green, has grown so pale!
But, ah! Though February, burnt and bare,
May claim—and take—his toll a little space,
Above his wailing western winds that parch
And through the haze that weights his sadden’d air,
There comes a whisper of autumnal grace:
There breathes a promise of the rains of March!

From: “The Australian Year: Twelve Sonnets on the Months” in The Bulletin, Volume 35, Number 1809 (15 October 1914), p. [unnumbered].
(https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-656636457/view?partId=nla.obj-656700094#page/n1/mode/1up)

Date: 1914

By: Sydney Elliott Napier (1870-1940)

Word Moth by Miriam McIlfatrcik-Ksenofontov

A reply to “Separated by the Wingspan of a Moth” by Pia Ghosh-Roy

Words lie in my lap like promises unmade
until a braille-breath rhythm rises and stirs
a visceral shiver of willow
a tinsel flicker of river
a riff that loosens a voice from its moorings
that divining rod dip that blindsides the body
and primes the mind for unspeakable wonder.
Will my words find the like on their own?

Will they grasp the tulip touch of infant muslin
or the tacking-stitch lilt of cloudburst passion?
Will they hold the strandedness of betrothal silk
or the light-shy memory of shrouding linen?
Will they learn to chastely accept the ecstasy
of the melt of amber in the valley of your throat?
Will they remember not to adorn the perfect arc
of your back as it cradle-charms music to life?
Will they stop picking the lock of the door
to the unfinished attic of obscure joys and sorrows?
Will they find a way of retracing their steps
to a waiting room of imponderable wonderment?
Will they just copy the glamour of the gold persimmon
or the seamless seed-dress of the ruby pomegranate?

Or, cornered and shorn of their sleek warm pelts
will they rediscover what it means to weave
a shirt of nettle in blistering silence—
tender shelter of the astounding word moth?

It flies out regardless, ancestral and sensory
in touch with its cells and cued by moonlight
owning its unnamed days and nights
it knows no nostalgia of origins – only
closure of cocoon and mastery of mimicry
the making of its way and its singular self
in an endless shedding of dazzling wingscale—
that deathless delight
of a precarious icon.

From: https://www.berfrois.com/2019/12/word-moth-by-miriam-mcilfatrick/

Date: 2019

By: Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov (19??- )

[A House by the Sea] by Doris Kareva

A house by the sea
forever feels like a ship
just put ashore.

Every night it roams
across endless oceans,
ages and spaces.

All around is a drift of stars,
deep within weeps a hearth
that no one will light.

As a dog misses its master,
so the house by the sea
pines for its captain.

From: https://www.eurolitnetwork.com/poems-from-days-of-grace-by-doris-kareva-translated-by-miriam-mcilfatrick-ksenofontov/

Date: 2018 (original in Estonian); 2018 (translation in English)

By: Doris Kareva (1958- )

Translated by: Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov (19??- )

The Kingfisher by James Maurice Thompson

He laughs by the summer stream
Where the lilies nod and dream,
As through the sheen of water cool and clear
He sees the chub and sunfish cutting sheer.

His are resplendent eyes;
His mien is kingliwise;
And down the May wind rides he like a king,
With more than royal purple on his wing.

His palace is the brake
Where the rushes shine and shake;
His music is the murmur of the stream,
And that leaf-rustle where the lilies dream.

Such life as his would be
A more than heaven to me:
All sun, all bloom, all happy weather,
All joys bound in a sheaf together.

No wonder he laughs so loud!
No wonder he looks so proud!
There are great kings would give their royalty
To have one day of his felicity!

From: https://mypoeticside.com/show-classic-poem-31048

Date: 1892

By: James Maurice Thompson (1844-1901)

The Huron by Ruth Herschberger

I swam the Huron of love, and am not ashamed,
It was many saw me do it, scoffing, scoffing,
They said it was foolish, winter and all,
But I dove in, greaselike, and swam,
And came up where Erie verges.
I would say for the expenditure of love,
And the atrophy of longing, there is no cure
So swift, so sleek, so fine, so draining
As a swim through the Huron in the wintertime.

From: https://poets.org/poem/huron

Date: 1969

By: Ruth Herschberger (1917-2014)

Cold in the Heart by Yetza Gillespie

When by God’s mercy you have got to bed,
Received the blanket’s blessing on the bone,
With the soft pillow underneath your head,
And the heart-cold that you cannot disown
Abates a little, and a little more,
And you drift off like down of soft black thistle
Into nothing at all, is it not sore
In that kind place to hear a far-off whistle
Like a slow rocket rise and arc and break
Into a shower of mournful stars that fall
On you, and shivering you jerk awake
And catch the echo of the fading call,
And mutter (knowing that it was a train)
“Morning will come. I must get up again.”

From: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/11/cold-in-the-heart/643516/

Date: 1947

By: Yetza Gillespie (1900-1964)

Your Words, My Answers by Burns Singer (James Hyman Singer)

Then what is it I am?
To make of what I mean?
What words will take it down
Through the disputed realm
Where you and I across
An oblique imperative
Meet one another’s loss?
Let that fierce statute give
Us new authority
Which takes away our claim
To saying what we mean:
Like the two limbs of a cross
Your words, my answers lie
Together in the place
Where all our meanings die.

From: Schmidt, Michael (ed.), The Harvill Book of 20th Century Poetry in English, 2003, The Harvill Press: London, p. 463.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Atnljg2r0K8C)

Date: 1957

By: Burns Singer (James Hyman Singer) (1928-1964)

Mirror in February by Thomas Kinsella

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed—my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy—
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this contented, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more: for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the awakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

From: Kinsella, Thomas, “Mirror in February” in Poetry, Volume 100, Issue 2, May 1962, p. 102.
(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/issue/70913/may-1962)

Date: 1962

By: Thomas Kinsella (1928-2021)

Drawing Down the Moon by Alfred Charles Tomlinson

I place on the sill a saucer
that I fill with water:
it rocks with a tidal motion,
as if that porcelain round
contained a small sea:
this threshold ocean
throws into confusion
the image that it seizes
out of the sky – the moon
just risen, and now in pieces
beneath the window: the glass
takes in the image at its source,
a clear shard of newness,
and lets it into the house
from pane to pane
riding slowly past:
when I look again
towards the sill, its dish
of moonlight is recomposing:
it lies still, from side to side
of the ceramic circle
curving across the water,
a sleeping bride:
for the moon’s sake
do not wake her,
do not shake the saucer.

From: https://poetryarchive.org/poem/drawing-down-moon/

Date: 1999

By: Alfred Charles Tomlinson (1927-2015)