Poetry Passion ~ November Frost

November

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--

No road--no street--
No "t'other side the way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--

No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!

No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!
~ Thomas Hood



Something Told the Wild Geese

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, "snow."

Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, "frost."

All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.

Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.
~ Rachel Field





Stanza I ~ Ode to the West Wind

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley 

LXXIX

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on."
~ Emily Dickinson







November

November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.
~ Elizabeth Coatsworth

A Spooky Dozen Online Books For Free

To read these online books, you don't need a Kindle or a Nook, and all of them are free. On some, you may have to make the text larger by holding down CTRL on your keyboard while clicking the Plus + Key. Others have multiple views and can even be downloaded as a text file. Enjoy! 

True Irish Ghost Stories
~ by St. John D. Seymour and Harry L. Neligan [1914]

Byways of Ghost-Land
~ by Elliott O'Donnell

 The Short Stories of H.G. Wells
~ including the eerie tales "The Magic Shop," "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid," and "The Empire of the Ants."

The Watcher and other Weird Stories
~ by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Haunted Hour
~ An Anthology of Poems compiled by Margaret Widdemer

The Book of Were-Wolves
~ classic folklore collection by Sabine Baring-Gould

The Stoneground Ghost Tales
~ Recollections of a Parish Vicar, by E. G. Swain

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
~ by Robert Louis Stevenson

 Historic Ghosts and Ghost-Hunters
~ by H. Addington Bruce

Short Stories and Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne 
~ including "The Minister's Black Veil," "Rapaccini's Daughter," and "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"

Modern Library: The Best Ghost Stories
~ edited by Joseph Lewis French, contrib. by Arthur B. Reeve , Daniel Defoe , M. R. James , Edward Bulwer-Lytton , Leopold Kompert , E. F. Benson , Algernon Blackwood , Rudyard Kipling , Brander Matthews , Ambrose Bierce , Vincent O'Sullivan and Ellis Parker Butler

The Best Psychic Stories
~ Edited by Joseph Lewis French, including Jack London, Algernon Blackwood, Katherine Bickford, Edgar Allen poe, Elsa Barker, Ambrose Bierce, H. Carrington, A. J. Davis, Helena Blavatsky, and W.F. Prince.

Poetry Passion: Halloween Shivers

Halloween
Tonight is the night

When dead leaves fly
Like witches on switches
Across the sky,
When elf and sprite
Flit through the night
On a moony sheen.

Tonight is the night
When leaves make a sound
Like a gnome in his home
Under the ground,
When spooks and trolls
Creep out of holes
Mossy and green.

Tonight is the night
When pumpkins stare
Through sheaves and leaves
Everywhere,
When ghoul and ghost
And goblin host
Dance round their queen.
It's Hallowe'en!
~ Harry Behn


Spirits Of The Dead
Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness- for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall overshadow thee; be still.

The night, though clear, shall frown,
And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in the Heaven
With light like hope to mortals given,
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,
Now are visions ne'er to vanish;
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more, like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze, the breath of God, is still,
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token.
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!
~ Edgar Allan Poe

~~~

Souvenir
A vanished house that for an hour I knew
By some forgotten chance when I was young
Had once a glimmering window overhung
With honeysuckle wet with evening dew.
Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,
And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung
Ferociously; and over me, among
The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.

Somewhere within there were dim presences
Of days that hovered and of years gone by.
I waited, and between their silences
There was an evanescent faded noise;
And though a child, I knew it was the voice
Of one whose occupation was to die.
~Edward Arlington Robinson

~~~

 Theme in Yellow

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

~ Carl Sandburg

Jack O'Lantern
I'm a jack o' lantern with a great big grin.
I'm a jack o' lantern with a candle in.
Poof! goes the wind and out goes the light.
Away fly the witches on Halloween night!
~ Author Unknown

The Bat

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.
His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse is so slow we think him dead.
He loops in crazy figures half the night.
Among the trees that face the corner light.
But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.
~ Theodore Roethke

~~~

Five Scary Books for Halloween Reading

Some of these books great to read, then read again. The shivers are actually better when you know they are coming . . .




The short graphic novel Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King is an overlooked classic, in my opinion. The story goes through the yearly cycle of full moons in the small town of Tarker's Mills, Maine, as the townsfolk slowly realize that a werewolf is living in their midst. And who will unmask the true identity of the beast? I will only give a hint: this is a truly satisfying story about courage and hardship while growing up, much like King's novel Hearts in Atlantis," or the story "The Body," which was the basis for the movie Stand by Me. And the wonderful werewolf illustrations make the story come to life. As one reviewer on Amazon put it: "A Fast Furry Fantasy."

If a reader isn't familiar with H.P. Lovecraft, you might believe he is a science fiction writer thanks to some of the gaudy book covers displaying alien-looking characters from the Cthulu Mythos. But once you read several of his stories set in New England, you will realize he is writing in the same tradition as Edgar Allen Poe and Washington Irving, a tradition that embraces local American history, folklore and ghost stories. There are shadowy valleys and strange fishing villages where no one dares to go. And like his literary descendent, Stephen King, Lovecraft can produce a supernatural shiver that goes up your spine in the midday sun, or when you notice something not quite right and the universe shifts around you. Like a good nightmare, these stories can shake you up, so read them with the light on, and be sure to lock the door first.



The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story was recently made into a creepy movie starring Dan Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, and before that the 1980s version starred Adrian Rawlins, who plays Harry's father James in the movies. Believe me, watching either or both of those movies will not diminish the pleasurable creepiness of the original novel. Nor will it give away the ending, since both movies based on her work are somewhat different thanks to poetic license of the filmmakers. Susan Hill is an old-fashioned mistress of the macabre, and this is a great atmospheric short read for a cool autumn night.



The late author John Keel writes in The Mothman Prophecies : "The universe does not exist as we think it exists. We do not exist as we think we exist." And that sets the stage for one of the creepiest stories of the late 20th century, the tale of an alleged flying creature that haunted an area of West Virginia, of people convinced they had met a harbinger of doom, of people driven almost to madness. There are hints of UFO's and Men in Black as well as a local curse by a dead warrior named Chief Cornstalk. The most chilling parts are the phone calls from an "entity" named "Indrid Cold," and some bizarre happenings at Keel's New York apartment surrounding his telephone. The movie with Richard Gere is merely based on this book and not a thorough telling - you really need the original to appreciate all the intricate coincidences and weird details. And hopefully this won't give you the heebie-jeebies about driving over large bridges.



Like most of Ray Bradbury's books, Something Wicked This Way Comes
is set in a midwestern town where life is slowly boring everyone to despair until something happens . . . Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show rolls into town and rattles everyone down to their bones. You have to love a book with names like "Jim Nightshade" - a boy who is definitely an American cousin of Harry Potter. But all the magic, except for love, is definitely from the Dark Side. Yes, it's a little over-the-top, but there's so much depth also, as Bradbury changes point of view between the children and the adults that you don't care. And for fans of the author you will notice recurring characters like the Illustrated Man, from the book of stories by that same name. In fact all of Bradbury's books are a little dark and great to read this time of year - The October Country and The Halloween Tree to name a few. But this book is Bradbury at his wicked best.

Poetry Passion: September Memories

Autumn Day

Lord, it is time. The summer was too long.
Lay your shadow on the sundials now,
and through the meadow let the winds throng.

Ask the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give them further two more summer days
to bring about perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will establish none,
whoever lives alone now will live on long alone,
will waken, read, and write long letters,
wander up and down the barren paths
the parks expose when the leaves are blown.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke
Translated by William Gass
 

Exuent

Piecemeal the summer dies;
At the field's edge a daisy lives alone;
A last shawl of burning lies
On a gray field-stone.

All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer's final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.

~ Richard Wilbur


Pickthorn Manor: 43

Daily they met. And gravely walked and talked.
He read her no more verses, and he stayed
Only until their conversation, balked
Of every natural channel, fled dismayed.
Again the next day she would meet him, trying
To give her tone some healthy sprightliness,
But his uneager dignity soon chilled
Her well-prepared address.
Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying
Of wild geese startled Eunice, and their flying
Whirred overhead for days and never stilled.

~ Amy Lowell


Crystal Moment

Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath.

From my boyhood I remember
A crystal moment of September.

A wooded island rang with sounds
Of church bells in the throats of hounds.

A buck leaped out and took the tide
With jewels flowing past each side.

With his head high like a tree
He swam within a yard of me.

I saw the golden drop of light
In his eyes turned dark with fright.

I saw the forest's holiness
On him like a fierce caress.

Fear made him lovely past belief,
My heart was trembling like a leaf.

He leans towards the land and life
With need above him like a knife.

In his wake the hot hounds churned
They stretched their muzzles out and yearned.

They bayed no more, but swam and throbbed
Hunger drove them till they sobbed.

Pursued, pursuers reached the shore
And vanished. I saw nothing more.

So they passed, a pageant such
As only gods could witness much,

Life and death upon one tether
And running beautiful together.

~ Robert Peter Tristram Coffin


Roads Go Ever On 

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journety new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still 'round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.


~ J. R. R. Tolkien