“And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly, / Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct”

For Poetry Monday, another modern if not contemporary sonnet:


Mid-March, Lizette Woodworth Reese

It is too early for white boughs, too late
For snows. From out the hedge the wind lets fall
A few last flakes, ragged and delicate.
Down the stripped roads the maples start their small,
Soft, ’wildering fires. Stained are the meadow stalks
A rich and deepening red. The willow tree
Is woolly. In deserted garden-walks
The lean bush crouching hints old royalty,
Feels some June stir in the sharp air and knows
Soon ’twill leap up and show the world a rose.

The days go out with shouting; nights are loud;
Wild, warring shapes the wood lifts in the cold;
The moon’s a sword of keen, barbaric gold,
Plunged to the hilt into a pitch black cloud.


I've posted a Reese poem before: she's an early 20th century Marylander.

---L.

Subject quote from Lines Written in the Album at Elbingerode, in the Hartz Forest, Samuel Coleridge.