Hymn to Pan - Shelley

FROM the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle-bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Temple lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni and Sylvans and fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and wave
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love,--as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dedal earth,
And of heaven, and the Giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
And then I changed my pipings,--
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus
I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept--as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood--
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 

Late October by Andrés Cerpa

Read the entire poem here in CiderPressReview, vol. 17, issue 4 [2015]--his work is excellent, very Neruda-style.

Awful & astonishing night will clasp at the leaves; at the coins of a ruined country:
yellow maple; red procession; black branches.

As I move through the park, as I measure, the winter birds bang
their primordial notes. They skitter & lead me home. [...]

D. Moore

Devon Moore has a great piece "Red", in her volume Apology of a girl who is told she is going to Hell. Also read her poem "Burial" here, it's very good. She has quite the mix of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney in her voice. Here's an excerpt from the previous:

I tell you this so that you know: There was once a body
of a woman on the beach, with legs glowing white and the fabric [...]

you could wrap a fist around, a chest of rosebuds, and a pile of adventure 

books by the bed she shared with her sister and all that a lit cigarette
against her skin would later fail to deliver. For a day my mother had 

a new red dress, so pretty, so pretty, all other desired redresses [...]

even when I write red and red and red and red, even when I call
out to her, mother, my voice pummeling through the silver [...]

Early October Snow - Robert Haight

Robert Haight's has an interesting voice -- see another of his poems here, and here's another:

It will not stay. 

But this morning we wake to pale muslin 

stretched across the grass. 

The pumpkins, still in the fields, are planets 

shrouded by clouds. 

The Weber wears a dunce cap 

and sits in the corner by the garage 

where asters wrap scarves 

around their necks to warm their blooms. 

The leaves, still soldered to their branches 

by a frozen drop of dew, splash 

apple and pear paint along the roadsides. 

It seems we have glanced out a window 

into the near future, mid-December, say, 

the black and white photo of winter 

carefully laid over the present autumn, 

like a morning we pause at the mirror 

inspecting the single strand of hair 

that overnight has turned to snow.

Watkins

"December Sonnet" by Christopher Watkins:

Now the corn mazes truly are frightening;
bedraggled hulking husks of a sinister thinness,
looming and swaying over the tamped-down paths
littered with their fallen hides —
ochre’d in the early winter darkness,
they rustle at the unsympathetic winds,
conspiratorial whispers
interwoven with the harsh hiss of the season.

What child now dares lose themselves
among these rasping ghouls, whose shrouds
come peeling off in leprous strips? What child now
dares enter this maze of death? What child? None!
For what they truly seek is not a fright,
but to be startled by delight.

Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Meng Haoran

Another interesting poem is "Thoughts in early winter" by major Tang dynasty poet Meng Haoran [孟浩然;] [689-740 a.D.] from the Chinese [http://www.chinese-poems.com/m8.html]: 

Trees shed leaves, and geese are flying south; The north wind blows, here on the river it's cold. My home is at the bend of the waters of Xiang, Far beyond the edge of the clouds of Chu. Travelling, I've exhausted my tears for home, I watch a lone sail at the heavens' end. The ferry's gone- who can I ask where? Darkness falls beside the level sea.

Shelley, "The Question"

   I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,

         Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,

And gentle odours led my steps astray,

         Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring

Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

         Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,

But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

   There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

         Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,

The constellated flower that never sets;

         Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth

The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—

         Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—

Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears,

When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

   And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

         Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,

And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine

         Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

         With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;

And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,

Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

   And nearer to the river's trembling edge

         There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,

And starry river buds among the sedge,

         And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

         With moonlight beams of their own watery light;

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

   Methought that of these visionary flowers

         I made a nosegay, bound in such a way

That the same hues, which in their natural bowers

         Were mingled or opposed, the like array

Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours

         Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,

I hastened to the spot whence I had come,

That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?

Shelley again

This little quote from Shelley is quite interesting and unique to think of during winter and fall [it's from his poem "To -----":

“Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.” 

Shelley

This piece, "Autumn: A Dirge", is truly lovely in an eerie way and encapsulates an intense feeling or aura of autumn and winter.

The warm sun is falling, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,

And the Year

On the earth is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,

Is lying. Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold Year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling

For the Year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone

To his dwelling. Come, Months, come away; Put on white, black and gray; Let your light sisters play-- Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold Year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

Anne Sexton

"…the thing with October is, I think, it somehow gets in your very blood. Unapologetically. Almost ruthlessly." 

Keats

"Ode to Autumn"
by Scottish poet John Keats [1795-1821]

1.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
        Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
    Conspiring with him how to load and bless
        With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
    To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
        And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
          To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
        With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
    And still more, later flowers for the bees,
  Until they think warm days will never cease,
          For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

2.
  Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
      Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
  Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
      Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
  Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
      Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
          Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
  And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
      Steady thy laden head across a brook;
      Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
          Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.
  Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
      Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
  While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
      And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
  Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
      Among the river sallows, borne aloft
          Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
  And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
      Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
      The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
          And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Swinburne

This is an incredible poem about autumn, winter and life itself. It is by Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909], a famous English poet. It draws you in, and makes you realize how the passing of time is constant--each moment can never been recaptured. It is imperative to 'grasp' as much of life as you can, or as is possible, before it is too late.


"Hendecasyllabics"



In the month of the long decline of roses
I, beholding the summer dead before me,
Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
Moving tremulous under feet of angels
Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
Heard between them a voice of exultation,
“Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
All the fruits of the day from all her branches
Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
All are taken away; the season wasted,
Like an ember among the fallen ashes.
Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,
Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
Woven under the eyes of stars and planets
When low light was upon the windy reaches
Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows
And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:
Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,
All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever.”

Poe

One of the greatest fall/autumn, spooky or Halloween type poems is American poet E.A. Poe's "Ulalume: A Ballad":

The skies they were ashen and sober; 

      The leaves they were crispéd and sere— 

      The leaves they were withering and sere; 

It was night in the lonesome October 

      Of my most immemorial year; 

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

      In the misty mid region of Weir— 

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

Here once, through an alley Titanic, 

      Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul— 

      Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 

These were days when my heart was volcanic 

      As the scoriac rivers that roll— 

      As the lavas that restlessly roll 

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 

      In the ultimate climes of the pole— 

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 

      In the realms of the boreal pole. 

Our talk had been serious and sober, 

      But our thoughts they were palsied and sere— 

      Our memories were treacherous and sere— 

For we knew not the month was October, 

      And we marked not the night of the year— 

      (Ah, night of all nights in the year!) 

We noted not the dim lake of Auber— 

      (Though once we had journeyed down here)— 

We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 

      Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 

      And star-dials pointed to morn— 

      As the star-dials hinted of morn— 

At the end of our path a liquescent 

      And nebulous lustre was born, 

Out of which a miraculous crescent 

      Arose with a duplicate horn— 

Astarte's bediamonded crescent 

      Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

And I said—"She is warmer than Dian: 

      She rolls through an ether of sighs— 

      She revels in a region of sighs: 

She has seen that the tears are not dry on 

      These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 

And has come past the stars of the Lion 

      To point us the path to the skies— 

      To the Lethean peace of the skies— 

Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

      To shine on us with her bright eyes— 

Come up through the lair of the Lion, 

      With love in her luminous eyes." 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

      Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust— 

      Her pallor I strangely mistrust:— 

Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger! 

      Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must." 

In terror she spoke, letting sink her 

      Wings till they trailed in the dust— 

In agony sobbed, letting sink her 

      Plumes till they trailed in the dust— 

      Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 

I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming: 

      Let us on by this tremulous light! 

      Let us bathe in this crystalline light! 

Its Sybilic splendor is beaming 

      With Hope and in Beauty to-night:— 

      See!—it flickers up the sky through the night! 

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 

      And be sure it will lead us aright— 

We safely may trust to a gleaming 

      That cannot but guide us aright, 

      Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 

      And tempted her out of her gloom— 

      And conquered her scruples and gloom: 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 

      But were stopped by the door of a tomb— 

      By the door of a legended tomb; 

And I said—"What is written, sweet sister, 

      On the door of this legended tomb?" 

      She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume— 

      'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 

      As the leaves that were crispèd and sere— 

      As the leaves that were withering and sere, 

And I cried—"It was surely October 

      On this very night of last year 

      That I journeyed—I journeyed down here— 

      That I brought a dread burden down here— 

      On this night of all nights in the year, 

      Oh, what demon has tempted me here? 

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber— 

      This misty mid region of Weir— 

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber— 

      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 

Said we, then—the two, then—"Ah, can it 

      Have been that the woodlandish ghouls— 

      The pitiful, the merciful ghouls— 

To bar up our way and to ban it 

      From the secret that lies in these wolds— 

      From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds— 

Had drawn up the spectre of a planet 

      From the limbo of lunary souls— 

This sinfully scintillant planet 

      From the Hell of the planetary souls?"

Anne Sexton

One modern classic is the poet Anne Sexton [1928-1974]--she wrote "Her Kind", a poem that seems to fit a Halloween, esoteric, mysterious dark history type of ethos. If you don't like Plath, Sexton is a great alternative to try. And if you do like Plath, you might like Sexton--she's a bit more contemplative, adult, 'older', and Millay-esque. Sexton also won a Pulitzer. Read more of her poetry here. And click here to listen to her read it aloud, it is very creepy, or read it below:

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Macbeth

In Shakespeare's famous play, Macbeth's witches are perfect for fall fun--to read, to write in cards, or to whisper to spook someone:

Double, double toil and trouble; 

Fire burn and caldron bubble. 

Fillet of a fenny snake, 

In the caldron boil and bake; 

Eye of newt and toe of frog, 

Wool of bat and tongue of dog, 

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, 

Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, 

For a charm of powerful trouble, 

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 

Double, double toil and trouble; 

Fire burn and caldron bubble. 

Cool it with a baboon's blood, 

Then the charm is firm and good.

This is what their opening moments look like, appropriately--read all of Macbeth here:

SCENE I. A desert place.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches

First Witch

When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch

When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.

Third Witch

That will be ere the set of sun.

First Witch

Where the place?

Second Witch

Upon the heath.

Third Witch

There to meet with Macbeth.

Burns

Read well-known Scottish poet [1759-1796] Robert Burns' famous "Halloween" poem as fall rolls in here; here's a little excerpt:

[...]

Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,
As through the glen it wimpl’t;
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays;
Whyles in a wiel it dimpl’t;
Whyles glitter’d to the nightly rays,
Wi’ bickering, dancing dazzle;
Whyles cookit underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel,
Unseen that night.

[...]

Elinor Wylie

Winter Sleep

When against earth a wooden heel 

Clicks as loud as stone on steel, 

When stone turns flour instead of flakes, 

And frost bakes clay as fire bakes, 

When the hard-bitten fields at last 

Crack like iron flawed in the cast, 

When the world is wicked and cross and old, 

I long to be quit of the cruel cold.

Little birds like bubbles of glass 

Fly to other Americas, 

Birds as bright as sparkles of wine 

Fly in the nite to the Argentine, 

Birds of azure and flame-birds go 

To the tropical Gulf of Mexico: 

They chase the sun, they follow the heat, 

It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet! 

It's not with them that I'd love to be, 

But under the roots of the balsam tree.

Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr 

Is lined within with the finest fur, 

So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house 

Of every squirrel and mole and mouse 

Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather, 

Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together 

With balsam and juniper, dry and curled, 

Sweeter than anything else in the world.

O what a warm and darksome nest 

Where the wildest things are hidden to rest! 

It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep, 

Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!

Elinor Wylie

Velvet Shoes

Let us walk in the white snow 

          In a soundless space; 

With footsteps quiet and slow, 

          At a tranquil pace, 

          Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk, 

          And you in wool, 

White as white cow's milk, 

          More beautiful 

          Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town 

          In a windless peace; 

We shall step upon white down, 

          Upon silver fleece, 

          Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes: 

          Wherever we go 

Silence will fall like dews 

          On white silence below. 

          We shall walk in the snow.

John Crowe Ransom's poem "April"

SAVOR of love is thick on the April air,
The blunted boughs dispose their lacy bloom,
And many sorry steeds dismissed to pasture
Toss their old forelocks, flourish heavy heels.
Where is there any unpersuaded poet
So angry still against the wrongs of winter
Which caused the dainty earth to droop and die,
So vengeant for his vine and summer song,
As to decline the good releasing thaw?
Poets have temperature and follow seasons,
And covenants go out at equinox.


The champions! For Heaven, riding high
Above the icy death, considered truly;
'My agate icy work, I thought it fair;
Yet I have lacked that pretty lift of praise
That mounted once from these emaciate minstrels.
They will not sing, and duty drops away
And I must turn and make a soft amend!'
At once he showered April down, until
The bleak twigs bloom again; and soon, I swear,
He shall receive his praise. 

Wylie

This is a great poem by American and famous beauty Elinor Wylie [1885-1928]--the early lines remind you of Keats, but then end is very American, Wordsworth/Frost style. It's spine chilling.

Wild Peaches

1

When the world turns completely upside down 

You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore 

Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; 

We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, 

You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown 

Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour. 

Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, 

We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter will be short, the summer long, 

The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, 

Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; 

All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. 

The squirrels in their silver fur will fall 

Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.

2

The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass 

Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. 

The misted early mornings will be cold; 

The little puddles will be roofed with glass. 

The sun, which burns from copper into brass, 

Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold 

Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold 

Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; 

A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; 

The spring begins before the winter's over. 

By February you may find the skins 

Of garter snakes and water moccasins 

Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.

3

When April pours the colours of a shell 

Upon the hills, when every little creek 

Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake 

In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, 

When strawberries go begging, and the sleek 

Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, 

We shall live well -- we shall live very well.

The months between the cherries and the peaches 

Are brimming cornucopias which spill 

Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; 

Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches 

We'll trample bright persimmons, while you kill 

Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.

4

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones 

There's something in this richness that I hate. 

I love the look, austere, immaculate, 

Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. 

There's something in my very blood that owns 

Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, 

A thread of water, churned to milky spate 

Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, 

Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; 

That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath, 

Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, 

Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, 

And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

Jackson

In the summer, reading winter poetry is a special thing to enjoy. You can really yearn for the ice cold breezes and crackling snow, whereas during the season itself, it's hard to appreciate. American poet and later activist for the Native Americans, Helen Hunt Jackson [1830-1885] has a great poem on the month of 'January' in this vein [read more here]:

O WINTER! frozen pulse and heart of fire,

What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn

Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn

Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire

The streams than under ice. June could not hire

Her roses to forego the strength they learn

In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn

The bridges thou dost lay where men desire

In vain to build.

                          O Heart, when Love's sun goes

To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,

Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.

Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.

Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,

The winter is the winter's own release.

Swinburne

English poet and many-time Nobel Prize in literature nominee, youthful wildman A.C. Swinburne's [1837-1909] poem 'A Dark Month' has a great opening in stanza one [and read more here]:

I. A MONTH without sight of the sun     Rising or reigning or setting Through days without use of the day, Who calls it the month of May? The sense of the name is undone     And the sound of it fit for forgetting.We shall not feel if the sun rise,     We shall not care when it sets: If a nightingale make night’s air As noontide, why should we care? Till a light of delight that is done rise,     Extinguishing grey regrets; Till a child’s face lighten again     On the twilight of older faces; Till a child’s voice fall as the dew On furrows with heat parched through And all but hopeless of grain,     Refreshing the desolate places— Fall clear on the ears of us hearkening     And hungering for food of the sound And thirsting for joy of his voice: Till the hearts in us hear and rejoice, And the thoughts of them doubting and darkening     Rejoice with a glad thing found. When the heart of our gladness is gone,     What comfort is left with us after? When the light of our eyes is away, What glory remains upon May, What blessing of song is thereon     If we drink not the light of his laughter? No small sweet face with the daytime     To welcome, warmer than noon! No sweet small voice as a bird’s To bring us the day’s first words! Mid May for us here is not Maytime!     No summer begins with June. A whole dead month in the dark,     A dawn in the mists that o’ercome her Stifled and smothered and sad— Swift speed to it, barren and bad! And return to us, voice of the lark,     And remain with us, sunlight of summer.

Bryant

William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] has some great poetry, he's a more relaxed version of Shelley--a more American one. He was an early U.S. poet and walked seven miles daily to his workplace as a lawyer. Read his work here--and here's an example of his beautiful work [the last stanza elevates the whole thing]:

THE YELLOW VIOLET.

When beechen buds begin to swell,
    And woods the blue-bird's warble know,
The yellow violet's modest bell
    Peeps from the last year's leaves below.

Ere russet fields their green resume,
    Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare,
To meet thee, when thy faint perfume
    Alone is in the virgin air.

Of all her train, the hands of Spring
    First plant thee in the watery mould,
And I have seen thee blossoming
    Beside the snow-bank's edges cold.

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
    Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip,
Has bathed thee in his own bright hue,
    And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
    And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet,
    When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh.

Oft, in the sunless April day,
    Thy early smile has stayed my walk;
But midst the gorgeous blooms of May,
    I passed thee on thy humble stalk.

So they, who climb to wealth, forget
    The friends in darker fortunes tried.
I copied them—but I regret
    That I should ape the ways of pride.

And when again the genial hour
    Awakes the painted tribes of light,
I'll not o'erlook the modest flower
    That made the woods of April bright.