Famous Long December Poems

Famous Long December Poems. Long December Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best December long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses;
Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool;
Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool.
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, 
Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; 
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early: 
And the day's a long one since the dawn was red. 

On the chilly lakelet, in that pleasant gloaming, 
See the sad swans sailing: they shall have no rest:
Never a voice to greet them save the bittern's booming 
Where the ghostly sallows sway against the West. 
'Sister,' saith the gray swan, 'Sister, I am weary,'
Turning to the white swan wet, despairing eyes; 
'O' she saith, 'my young one! O' she saith, 'my dearie !' 
Casts her wings about him with a storm of cries. 

Woe for Lir's sweet children whom their vile stepmother 
Glamoured with her witch-spells for a thousand years; 
Died their father raving, on his throne another, 
Blind before the end came from the burning tears. 
Long the swans have wandered over lake and river; 
Gone is all the glory of the race of Lir: 
Gone and long forgotten like a dream...
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 ("En ce temps-là du ciel les portes.") 
 
 {Bk. I. v., December, 1822.} 


 The golden gates were opened wide that day, 
 All through the unveiled heaven there seemed to play 
 Out of the Holiest of Holy, light; 
 And the elect beheld, crowd immortal, 
 A young soul, led up by young angels bright, 
 Stand in the starry portal. 
 
 A fair child fleeing from the world's fierce hate, 
 In his blue eye the shade of sorrow sate, 
 His golden hair hung all dishevelled down, 
 On wasted cheeks that told a mournful story, 
 And angels twined him with the innocent's crown, 
 The martyr's palm of glory. 
 
 The virgin souls that to the Lamb are near, 
 Called through the clouds with voices heavenly clear, 
 God hath prepared a glory for thy brow, 
 Rest in his arms, and all ye hosts that sing 
 His praises ever on untired string, 
 Chant, for a mortal comes among ye now; 
 Do homage—"'Tis a king." 
 
 And the pale shadow saith to God in heaven: 
 "I am an orphan and no king at all;...
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 ("Il semblait grelotter.") 
 
 {XXXVI., December, 1837.} 


 He seemed to shiver, for the wind was keen. 
 'Twas a poor statue underneath a mass 
 Of leafless branches, with a blackened back 
 And a green foot—an isolated Faun 
 In old deserted park, who, bending forward, 
 Half-merged himself in the entangled boughs, 
 Half in his marble settings. He was there, 
 Pensive, and bound to earth; and, as all things 
 Devoid of movement, he was there—forgotten. 
 
 Trees were around him, whipped by icy blasts— 
 Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird, 
 And, like himself, grown old in that same place. 
 Through the dark network of their undergrowth, 
 Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown. 
 Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night 
 Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist. 
 This—nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood. 
 
 Poor, helpless marble, how I've pitied it! 
 Less often man—the harder of the two. 
 
 So, then, without a word that might offend 
 His ear deformed—for well the marble hears 
 The voice of thought—I said to him: "You hail 
 From...
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 Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 
.
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, 
.
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet 
.
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor 
.
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; 
.
Far off the noises of the world retreat; 
.
The loud vociferations of the street 
.
Become an undistinguishable roar. 
.
So, as I enter here from day to day, 
.

And leave my burden at this minster gate, 
.

Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, 
.

The tumult of the time disconsolate 
.

To inarticulate murmurs dies away, 
.

While the eternal ages watch and wait.II.2.
How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! 
.
This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves 
.
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves 
.
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, 
.
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! 
.
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves 
.
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, 
.
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! 
.
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, 
.

What exultations trampling on despair, 
.

What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, 
.

What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, 
.

Uprose this poem of the earth and air, 
.

This medi?val...
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 January

Janus am I; oldest of potentates; 
Forward I look, and backward, and below 
I count, as god of avenues and gates, 
The years that through my portals come and go. 
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; 
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; 
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, 
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men. 

February

I am lustration, and the sea is mine! 
I wash the sands and headlands with my tide; 
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine; 
Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide. 
By me all things unclean are purified, 
By me the souls of men washed white again; 
E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died 
Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain. 

March

I Martius am! Once first, and now the third! 
To lead the Year was my appointed place; 
A mortal dispossessed me by a word, 
And set there Janus with the double face. 
Hence I make war on all the human race; 
I shake the cities with my hurricanes; 
I flood the rivers and their banks efface, 
And drown the farms and hamlets with my rains. 

April 

I open wide...
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 (WASHINGTON SQUARE)


I met him, as one meets a ghost or two, 
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel. 
“King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,” 
Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.” 

He led me down familiar steps again, 
Appealingly, and set me in a chair. 
“My dreams have all come true to other men,” 
Said he; “God lives, however, and why care? 

“An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.” 
He laughed, and something glad within me sank. 
I may have eyed him with a faint alarm, 
For now his laugh was lost in what he drank. 

“They chill things here with ice from hell,” he said; 
“I might have known it.” And he made a face 
That showed again how much of him was dead,
And how much was alive and out of place. 

And out of reach. He knew as well as I 
That all the words of wise men who are skilled 
In using them are not much to defy 
What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled.

What evil and infirm perversity 
Had been at work with him to bring him back? 
Never among the ghosts, assuredly, 
Would he originate a new attack; 

Never...
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"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 
Comest to daunt me! 
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5 
But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretched, as if asking alms, 
Why dost thou haunt me?" 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10 
As when the Northern skies 
Gleam in December; 
And, like the water's flow 
Under December's snow, 
Came a dull voice of woe 15 
From the heart's chamber. 

"I was a Viking old! 
My deeds, though manifold, 
No Skald in song has told, 
No Saga taught thee! 20 
Take heed, that in thy verse 
Thou dost the tale rehearse, 
Else dread a dead man's curse; 
For this I sought thee. 

"Far in the Northern Land, 25 
By the wild Baltic's strand, 
I, with my childish hand, 
Tamed the gerfalcon; 
And, with my skates fast-bound, 
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, 30 
That the poor whimpering hound 
Trembled to walk on. 

"Oft to his frozen lair 
Tracked I the grisly bear, 
While from my path the hare 35 
Fled like a shadow; 
Oft through the forest dark 
Followed the were-wolf's bark, 
Until the soaring lark 
Sang from the meadow. 40 

"But when I...
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 A sad tale of the sea, I will unfold,
About Mrs Lingard, that Heroine bold;
Who struggled hard in the midst of the hurricane wild,
To save herself from being drowned, and her darling child. 

'Twas on the 8th of September, the Barque "Lynton" sailed for Aspinwall,
And the crew on board, numbered thirteen in all;
And the weather at the time, was really very fine,
On the morning that the ill-fated vessel left the Tyne. 

And on the 19th of November, they hove in sight of Aspinwall,
But little did they think there was going to be a squall;
When all on a sudden, the sea came rolling in,
And a sound was heard in the heavens, of a rather peculiar din. 

Then the vivid lightning played around them, and the thunder did roar,
And the rain came pouring down, and lashed the barque all o'er;
Then the Captain's Wife and Children were ordered below,
And every one on board began to run to and fro. 

Then the hurricane in all its fury, burst upon them,
And the sea in its madness, washed the deck from stem to stem;
And the rain poured in torrents, and the waves seemed mountains high,
Then all on board the barque, to God for help, did loudly...
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 The mountain held the town as in a shadow 
I saw so much before I slept there once: 
I noticed that I missed stars in the west, 
Where its black body cut into the sky. 
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall 
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. 
And yet between the town and it I found, 
When I walked forth at dawn to see new things, 
Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields. 
The river at the time was fallen away, 
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones; 
But the signs showed what it had done in spring; 
Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass 
Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark. 
I crossed the river and swung round the mountain. 
And there I met a man who moved so slow 
With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart, 
It seemed no hand to stop him altogether. 
"What town is this?" I asked. 
"This? Lunenburg." 
Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn, 
Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain, 
But only felt at night its shadowy presence. 
"Where is your village? Very far from here?" 
"There is...
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 Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta.


I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means...
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 "Hullo, Alice!"
"Hullo, Leon!"
"Say, Alice, gi' me a couple
O' them two for five cigars,
Will yer?"
"Where's your nickel?"
"My! Ain't you close!
Can't trust a feller, can yer."
"Trust you! Why
What you owe this store
Would set you up in business.
I can't think why Father 'lows it."
"Yer Father's a sight more neighbourly
Than you be. That's a fact.
Besides, he knows I got a vote."
"A vote! Oh, yes, you got a vote!
A lot o' good the Senate'll be to Father
When all his bank account
Has run away in credits.
There's your cigars,
If you can relish smokin'
With all you owe us standin'."
"I dunno as that makes 'em taste any diff'rent.
You ain't fair to me, Alice, 'deed you ain't.
I work when anythin's doin'.
I'll get a carpenterin' job next Summer sure.
Cleve was tellin' me to-day he'd take me on come Spring."
"Come Spring, and this December!
I've no patience with you, Leon,
Shilly-shallyin' the way you do.
Here, lift over them crates o' oranges
I wanter fix 'em in the winder."
"It riles yer, don't it, me not havin' work.
You pepper up about it somethin' good.
You pick an' pick, and that don't help a mite.
Say, Alice, do come in out o' that winder.
Th' oranges c'n wait,
An' I don't like talkin' to yer back."
"Don't you! Well, you'd better make...
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 "Was I at Eureka?" His figure was drawn to a youthful height,
And a flood of proud recollections made the fire in his grey eyes bright;
With pleasure they lighted and glisten'd, tho' the digger was grizzled and old,
And we gathered about him and listen'd while the tale of Eureka he told.

"Ah, those were the days," said the digger, "twas a glorious life that we led,
When fortunes were dug up and lost in a day in the whirl of the years that are dead.
But there's many a veteran now in the land - old knights of the pick and the spade,
Who could tell you in language far stronger than mine 'bout the fight at Eureka Stockade.

"We were all of us young on the diggings in days when the nation had birth -
Light-hearted, and careless, and happy, and the flower of all nations on earth;
But we would have been peaceful an' quiet if the law had but let us alone;
And the fight - let them call it a riot - was due to no fault of our own.

"The creed of our rulers was narrow - they ruled with a merciless hand,
For the mark of the cursed broad arrow was deep in the...
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ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, 
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,¡ª 
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, 
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 
"'T is some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door; 5 
Only this and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December 
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow;¡ªvainly I had sought to borrow 
From my books surcease of sorrow¡ªsorrow for the lost Lenore, 10 
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore: 
Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 
Thrilled me¡ªfilled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; 
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating 15 
"'T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, 
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door: 
This it is and nothing more." 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; 20 
But the fact is I was...
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 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.



All that is near,
I no longer give it a name.

Once a stone hard of hearing,
Once sharpened into a knife...

Now only a chill
Slipping through.

Enough glow to kneel by and ask
To be tied to its tail

When it goes marrying
Its cousins, the stars.



Is it a cloud?
If it's a cloud it will move on.

The true shape of this thought,
Migrant, waning.

Something seeks someone,
It bears him a gift

Of himself, a bit
Of snow to taste,

Glimpse of his own nakedness
By which to imagine the face.



On a late afternoon of snow
In a dim badly-aired grocery,

Where a door has just rung
With a short, shrill echo,

A little boy hands the old,
Hard-faced woman

Bending low over the counter,
A shiny nickel for a cupcake.

Now only that shine, now
Only that lull abides.



That your gaze
Be merciful,

Sister, bride
Of my first hopeless insomnia.

Kind nurse, show me
The place of salves.

Teach me the song
That makes a man rise

His glass at dusk
Until a star dances in it.



Who are you? Are you anybody
A moonrock would...
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 I

What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who'd have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through the merry weather,
The snowiest in all December;
I left his arm that night myself
For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet,
That wrote the book there, on the shelf— 
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day?
Never looked he half so gay!

He was prouder than the devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!
Ay, and many other meetings,
Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
As up and down he paced this London,
With no work done, but great works undone,
Where scarce twenty knew his name.
Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
Written, bustled? Who's to blame
If your silence kept unbroken?
"True, but there were sundry jottings,
Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs and blottings,
Certain first steps were achieved
Already which—(is that your meaning?)
Had well borne out whoe'er believed
In more to come!" But who goes gleaning
Hedge-side chance-blades, while full-sheaved
Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening
Pride alone, puts forth such claims
O'er the...
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