January Poems
A Year's Carols
by Algernon Charl Swinburne
JANUARY
HAIL, January, that bearest here
On snowbright breasts the babe-faced year
That weeps and trembles to be born.
Hail, maid and mother, strong and bright,
Hooded and cloaked and shod with white,
Whose eyes are stars that match the morn.
Thy forehead braves the storm's bent bow,
Thy feet enkindle stars of snow.
......
The Months
by Sara Coleridge
January brings the snow,
makes our feet and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.
March brings breezes loud and shrill,
stirs the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
......
Fish Crier
by Carl Sandburg
I know a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble in January.
He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing a joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing.
His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, terribly glad that God made fish, and customers to whom he may call his wares, from a pushcart.
I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
by Pablo Neruda
I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.
......
The Spring
by Thomas Carew
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring.
......
Birthday
by Robert William Service
(16th January 1949)
I thank whatever gods may be
For all the happiness that's mine;
That I am festive, fit and free
To savour women, wit and wine;
That I may game of golf enjoy,
And have a formidable drive:
In short, that I'm a gay old boy
Though I be
......
I Shall Not Burn
by Robert William Service
I have done with love and lust,
I reck not for gold or fame;
I await familiar dust
These frail fingers to reclaim:
Not for me the tiger flame.
Not for me the furnace glow,
Rage of fire and ashen doom;
To sweet earth my bones bestow
Where above a lowly tomb
......
Finale
by Robert William Service
Here is this vale of sweet abiding,
My ultimate and dulcet home,
That gently dreams above the chiding
of restless and impatient foam;
Beyond the hazards of hell weather,
The harceling of wind and sea,
With timbers morticed tight together
My old hulk havens happily.
The dawn exultantly discloses
......
Fish Crier
by Carl Sandburg
I know a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble in January.
He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing a joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing.
His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, terribly glad that God made fish, and customers to whom he may call his wares, from a pushcart.
Manitoba Childe Roland
by Carl Sandburg
LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles
over our house and whistling a wolf song under the
eaves.
I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl
the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark
Tower Came.
And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was
beautiful to her and she could not understand.
A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and
nothing happens--and he goes on and on--and it's
......
