Poems of Joy and Celebration

By Daniel Conway

A collection of poems celebrating life, nature, spirituality and humour. Here you will find verses from infamous poets such as John Keats, Emily Dickinson and Rudyard Kipling on a range of joyful subjects including the natural world, faith, inspiration and irreverence and satire. For the religious and non-religion alike, you are sure to find something to get your soul singing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: Aug 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781784285326

Book preview

Poems of Joy & Celebration

Contents

Nature and the Seasons

Inspiration and Joy

Spirit and Faith

Irreverence and Satire

Nature and the Seasons

Trees

Ode To The West Wind

On The Grasshopper And Cricket

Quiet Work

Nature

The Mower To The Glowworms

To Daffodils

The Sick Rose

The Lily

Reverie: The Orchard On The Slope

The Passionate Shepherd To His Love

Her Reply

To A Skylark

To The Man-of-War Bird

Robin Redbreast

Sunrise Along The Shore

The Coming Of Morn

The Morning Land

Indian Summer

Loveliest Of Trees

Indian Summer

October’s Bright Blue Weather

October

To Autumn

A Song Of Autumn

The Fall Of The Leaf

In Memorabilia Mortis

The Winter Galaxy

Winter Evening

The Snow Storm

The Quiet Snow

December

A January Morning

January

The Winter Lakes

The Heart Of Night

A Canadian Summer Evening

A Thunderstorm

Marigolds

Fire-Flowers

Beyond The Sunset

The Vesper Star

To A Mouse, On Turning Up Her Nest With The Plough

The Tiger

The Darkling Thrush

A Noiseless Patient Spider

Moonset

The Last Rose Of Summer

Cavalry Crossing A Ford

As The Team’s Head-Brass

Trees

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

JOYCE KILMER

Ode To The West Wind

I

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 wingèd 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!

II

Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height –

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams,

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

O, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

On The Grasshopper And Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

That is the Grasshopper’s — he takes the lead

In summer luxury, — he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,

The Grasshopper’s among the grassy hills.

JOHN KEATS

Quiet Work

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,

One lesson which in every wind is blown,

One lesson of two duties kept at one

Though the loud world proclaim their enmity —

Of toil unsevered from tranquillity!

Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows

Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in repose,

Too great for haste, too high for rivalry!

Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,

Man’s fitful uproar mingling with his toil,

Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,

Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting;

Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,

Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Nature

O nature I do not aspire

To be the highest in thy quire,

To be a meteor in the sky

Or comet that may range on high,

Only a zephyr that may blow

Among the reeds by the river low.

Give me thy most privy place

Where to run my airy race.

In some withdrawn unpublic mead

Let me sigh upon a reed,

Or in the woods with leafy din

Whisper the still evening in,

For I had rather be thy child

And pupil in the forest wild

Than be the king of men elsewhere

And most sovereign slave of care

To have one moment of thy dawn

Than share the city’s year forlorn.

Some still work give me to do

Only be it near to you.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The Mower To The Glowworms

I

Ye living Lamps, by whose dear light

The Nightingale does sit so late,

And studying all the Summer night,

Her matchless Songs does meditate;

II

Ye Country Comets, that portend

No War, nor Prince’s funeral,

Shining unto no higher end

Than to presage the Grass’s fall;

III

Ye Glowworms, whose officious Flame

To wandring Mowers shows the way,

That in the Night have lost their aim,

And after foolish Fires do stray;

IV

Your courteous Lights in vain you waste,

Since Juliana here is come,

For She my Mind hath so displac’d

That I shall never find my home.

ANDREW MARVELL

To Daffodils

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attained his noon.

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a Spring!

As quick a growth to meet decay,

As you, or any thing.

We die,

As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the Summer’s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

Ne’er to be found again.

ROBERT HERRICK

The Sick Rose

O rose, thou art sick:

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy