Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) : from "The Masque of Pandora"

Let us go forth from this mysterious place.

The garden walks are pleasant at this hour;

The nightingales among the sheltering boughs

Of populous and many-nested trees

Shall teach me how to woo thee, and shall tell me

By what resistless charms or incantations

They won their mates.




To a Nightingale
Poems from Sappho to Borges
Edited by Edward Hirsch
George Braziller Inc. 2007



H. W. Longfellow  The Masque of Pandora 
1875

introducing Mr. Copper

<> Photography

Lisa Olstein : "Dear One Absent This Long While"

It has been so wet stones glaze in moss;
everything blooms coldly.

I expect you. I thought one night it was you
at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs,

you in a shiver of light, but each time
leaves in wind revealed themselves,

the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak.
We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove.

In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires
over which young men and women leapt.

June efforts quietly.
I've planted vegetables along each garden wall

so even if spring continues to disappoint
we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain.

I have new gloves and a new hoe.
I practice eulogies. He was a hawk

with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs
of a salamander crossing the old pony post road.

Yours is the name the leaves chatter
at the edge of the unrabbited woods.



Poem of the Day, posted by The Poetry Foundation on April 20, 2018