Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
###
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was one of the foremost poets of 20th century literature. An Irish poet and playwright, Yeats helped drive the Irish Literary Revival and co-founded the Abbey Theatre. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”
Yeats was born in Dublin and spent his childhood between London and County Sligo in Ireland. The Irish landscape and folklore of his youth informed much of his poetic imagery and nationalistic sentiments later in life. Though he trained as a painter initially, Yeats turned fully towards poetry in his twenties while becoming involved in occult circles in London. He published several poetry collections in the 1890s as well as plays rooted in Irish mythology.
Alongside Lady Gregory, Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival aimed at reviving native Irish language and culture through art. As a playwright, he co-founded the Abbey Theatre with Gregory and others as a home for Irish drama. Over his long and prolific career, Yeats cemented his legacy as one of Ireland’s most revered writers, noted for his imaginative lyricism and powerful vision infused with Irish politics and mythology. His poems of unrequited love, Irish rebellion and the arcane remain widely influential in modern literature.
Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (1823 – 1902) was a poet and novelist who brought fresh perspective to New England life through her Gothic-inspired writings.
Christmas Comes Again
by Elizabeth Stoddard
Let me be merry now, ‘t is time;
The season is at hand
For Christmas rhyme and Christmas chime,
Close up, and form the band.
The winter fires still burn as bright,
The lamp-light is as clear,
And since the dead are out of sight,
What hinders Christmas cheer?
Why think or speak of that abyss
In which lies all my Past?
High festival I need not miss,
While song and jest shall last.
We’ll clink and drink on Christmas Eve,
Our ghosts can feel no wrong;
They revelled ere they took their leave—
Hearken, my Soldier’s Song:
“The morning air doth coldly pass,
Comrades, to the saddle spring:
The night more bitter cold will bring
Ere dying—ere dying.
Sweetheart, come, the parting glass;
Glass and sabre, clash, clash, clash,
Ere dying—ere dying.
Stirrup-cup and stirrup-kiss—
Do you hope the foe we’ll miss,
Sweetheart, for this loving kiss,
Ere dying—ere dying?”
The feasts and revels of the year
Do ghosts remember long?
Even in memory come they here?
Listen, my Sailor’s Song:
“O my hearties, yo heave ho!
Anchor’s up in Jolly Bay—
Hey!
Pipes and swipes, hob and nob—
Hey!
Mermaid Bess and Dolphin Meg,
Paddle over Jolly Bay—
Hey!
Tars, haul in for Christmas Day,
For round the ‘varsal deep we go;
Never church, never bell,
For to tell
Of Christmas Day.
Yo heave ho, my hearties O!
Haul in, mates, here we lay—
Hey!”
His sword is rusting in its sheath,
His flag furled on the wall;
We’ll twine them with a holly-wreath,
With green leaves cover all.
So clink and drink when falls the eve;
But, comrades, hide from me
Their graves—I would not see them heave
Beside me, like the sea.
Let not my brothers come again,
As men dead in their prime;
Then hold my hands, forget my pain,
And strike the Christmas chime.
###
Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (1823 – 1902) was a poet and novelist who brought fresh perspective to New England life through her Gothic-inspired writings. Born into privilege as a member of Maine’s wealthy Collins family, Stoddard had creative ambitions from a young age. After marrying famed poet Richard Henry Stoddard, she began channeling her skills into both poetry and prose.
Stoddard published her first poem in 1852, quickly earning acclaim for her lyrical verses meditating on love, death, morality and the human condition. Her work appeared in prominent literary magazines for decades, targeting discerning intellectual readers rather than the masses. Stoddard’s distinct poetry was finally compiled into the 1895 collection Poems, featuring favored pieces like “A Presence,” “October,” and “Three Loves.”
In addition to poetry, Stoddard produced three insightful novels between 1862 and 1867. Her debut The Morgesons (1862) painted a stark portrait of a unraveling New England family weakened by societal pressures and inner turmoil. Stoddard expanded her scope with Two Men (1865) and Temple House (1867), probing religion, morality and community identity across Massachusetts, Maine and the isolated Temple House island monastery. More mature editions released in 1888 earned Stoddard’s novels, commended for their psychological depth and regional accuracy, greater readership. Stoddard also tapped into her reservations about strict Puritanical principles through the lighthearted children’s tale Lolly Dinks’s Doings (1874), chronicling the adventures of an irrepressibly free-spirited young girl.
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born in 1832 in Cheshire, England. Best known for his whimsical children’s stories
Christmas Greetings
[FROM A FAIRY TO A CHILD.]
by Lewis Carroll
Lady dear, if Fairies may
For a moment lay aside
Cunning tricks and elfish play,
‘Tis at happy Christmas-tide.
We have heard the children say—
Gentle children, whom we love—
Long ago, on Christmas Day,
Came a message from above.
Still, as Christmas-tide comes round,
They remember it again—
Echo still the joyful sound
“Peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Yet the hearts must childlike be
Where such heavenly guests abide:
Unto children, in their glee,
All the year is Christmas-tide!
Thus, forgetting tricks and play
For a moment, Lady dear,
We would wish you, if we may,
Merry Christmas, glad New Year!
Christmas, 1867.
###
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born in 1832 in Cheshire, England. Best known for his whimsical children’s stories Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll was an English writer, mathematician, photographer, and Anglican deacon. As a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church college, Oxford for over 25 years, Carroll had a natural talent for puzzles, logic, and fantasy that was woven throughout his literary works. His creative children’s stories featuring Alice exploring nonsensical dreamworlds became beloved classics of imaginative literature. As an early photography enthusiast, Carroll frequently photographed children in his life, including the daughters of friends that inspired his character Alice. While Dodgson lived a rather reclusive life devoted to academia and creative pursuits, his alter ego Lewis Carroll became one of the most popular children’s storytellers of the 19th century, with imaginative tales of fantasy exploration that continue to captivate readers young and old.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, critic and editor best known for his tales of mystery and horror.
Dreamland
by Edgar Allan Poe
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space—out of Time.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters—lone and dead,
Their still waters—still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,—
By the mountains—near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—
By the gray woods,—by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,—
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,—
By each spot the most unholy—
In each nook most melancholy,—
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the past—
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by—
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion
‘Tis a peaceful, soothing region—
For the spirit that walks in shadow
‘Tis—oh, ’tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not—dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only.
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.
1844
###
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, critic and editor best known for his tales of mystery and horror. He is considered a central figure in the American Romantic movement and was one of the first American practitioners of the short story.
Poe was born in Boston to actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe Jr. His father abandoned the family when Poe was a toddler and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was two, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances in Richmond, Virginia.
Though never formally adopted, Poe took Allan as his middle name. He had a strained relationship with John Allan who did not support his literary ambitions. As a young man Poe attended the University of Virginia but was forced to drop out due to lack of funds.
His publishing career began in 1827 with the poetry collection Tamerlane and Other Poems. In 1835 he became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. He later lived in Philadelphia working as editor for magazines like Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine.
It was during this time that Poe established himself as a critical reviewer and published many of his most famous stories, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
Known for his Gothic, macabre themes and melancholic tone, Poe pioneered the modern detective story and helped define early science fiction. He married his cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836 who died of tuberculosis in 1847. Poe himself died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 40 in 1849.
Though not widely recognized during his lifetime, Poe’s stories and criticism have had a profound and lasting influence on American and international literature. He is now considered one of the most significant writers of the 19th century.
XXVIII
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:{46}
But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
XXIX
With such compelling cause to grieve
As daily vexes household peace,
And chains regret to his decease,
How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
Which brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower’d largess of delight,
In dance and song and game and jest.
Yet go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont
That guard the portals of the house;
Old sisters of a day gone by,
Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
Why should they miss their yearly due
Before their time? They too will die.
XXX
With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess’d the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
At our old pastimes in the hall
We gambol’d, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused: the winds were in the beech:
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand-in-hand
Sat silent, looking each at each.
Then echo-like our voices rang;
We sung, tho’ every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang:{49}
We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
Upon us: surely rest is meet:
‘They rest,’ we said, ‘their sleep is sweet,’
And silence follow’d, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range;
Once more we sang: ‘They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change;
Rapt from the fickle and the frail
With gather’d power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil.
Rise, happy morn, rise holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
O Father! touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.’
LXXVI
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth,
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve;
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic pictures breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show’d a token of distress?
No single tear, no type of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?{107}
O last regret, Regret can die!
No—mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
CIII
This holly by the cottage-eave,
To night, ungather’d, shall it stand:
We live within the stranger’s land,
And strangely falls our Christmas eve.
Our father’s dust is left alone
And silent under other snows:
There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuse
The genial hour with mask and mime;
For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.{161}
But let no footstep beat the floor,
Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form
Through which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast,
Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measur’d arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.
Alfred Lord Tennyson is considered one of the greatest English poets of the Victorian era. He was born in 1809 in England. His early poems were largely influenced by the times—his famous poem “The Lady of Shalott” is set in King Arthur’s Camelot, showing his early interest in medieval themes. Tennyson continued writing and expanding his catalog of poems. In 1850, he was appointed the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland. Two years later, upon the death of William Wordsworth, Tennyson officially assumed the role of Poet Laureate. Some of his most famous poems are ‘In Memoriam’, ‘Idylls of the King’, and ‘Tithonus’. While Tennyson garnered fame and accolades in his home country, his reputation eventually spread across the globe. Much of his poetry focused on grief, loss, doubt, and faith. Despite periods of deep sadness, Tennyson maintained an unwavering faith throughout his life. His poems explore complex themes in mystical ways, allowing readers to uncover new interpretations with each reading. Though he passed in 1892, Tennyson’s works continue to inspire and connect deeply with readers over 150 years later.
After graduating from the Columbia School of Journalism, I became the managing editor of a Bronx newspaper and my graduate school classmate became a stringer for The New York Times. I wanted to be a stringer, too. I gave him almost everything I had ever published and he recommended me for the job.
I became a Metro Section stringer and I covered a fire, a numbers bust, a gang fight, a gun standoff at Penn Station, the death of a homeless man across from a hospital, and other stories. My reporting appeared in the Times and I always bought a copy of the paper.
Once, a tall, burly man with a baseball cap and thick beard approached me at the newsstand near my Upper West Side apartment.
“Do you want to be an actress?” he said.
“No, a writer,” I said.
He shrugged and wrote his name and number in my newly purchased New York Times—James Toback, writer “Bugsy” and director “The Pick-up Artist.”
“Call me if you change your mind,” he said.
Turns out, he was accused of being a sexual predator who used to target women in my old neighborhood. Luckily, I moved across town and became a writer and never called.
###
Karol Nielsen is the author of the memoirs Walking A&P and Black Elephants and three poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her full-length poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poem “This New Manhattan” was a finalist for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize.
John RC Potter is a gay man from Canada, living in Istanbul, and an international educator (currently university counsellor, formerly principal & teacher).
Road Kill
by John RC Potter
I saw a raccoon lying on the side of the road last night
on his back, freshly dead, his paws raised in supplication;
he reminded me of me:
but can the dead still be moved through manipulation?
Whenever I see raccoons lying dead on the road,
they remind me of all those who have loved and lost:
dead and dying hearts on this endless highway of love,
whose owners took a chance but at quite a high cost.
I saw a raccoon dying on the side of the road last night
on his back, still alive, wondering what had happened to him;
he reminded me of me:
just a heap on the highway of love as the light grows dim.
###
John RC Potter is a gay man from Canada, living in Istanbul, and an international educator (currently university counsellor, formerly principal & teacher). He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist, May 2023). His poems and stories have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”, June 2023), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”, June 2023) & Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”, July 2023). John RC Potter – Author Website (author-blog.org)
The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand; The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand; The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea; And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.
They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day; But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay. We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout, And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North; All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth; All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread, For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.
We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared; But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard: So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high, And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.
The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam; The good red fires were burning bright in every ’longshore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out; And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.
The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer; For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year) This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn, And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.
O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair; And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.
And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me, Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way, To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas Day.
They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall. “All hands to loose topgallant sails,” I heard the captain call. “By the Lord, she’ll never stand it,” our first mate, Jackson, cried. . . . “It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,” he replied.
She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good, And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood. As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night, We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.
And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me, As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea; But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.
###
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a celebrated Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. Born into a family of engineers in Edinburgh, he first pursued law to satisfy his family but soon turned to his true passions of writing and literature. Though plagued by illness for most of his life, Stevenson traveled extensively in Europe and North America, using his journeys across the Atlantic as inspiration for many of his writings.
Some of Stevenson’s most enduring fiction works take place amidst these travels, including his coming-of-age classic Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886). Known for his unique narrative style and mastery of atmosphere, Stevenson also authored seminal works like Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), a thrilling exploration of good versus evil. His short fiction like The Bottle Imp (1891) and Markheim (1885) also demonstrate his interest in moral ambiguity and psychology. Beyond his dark, ingenious fiction, Stevenson’s travelogues vividly capture life as an eccentric wanderer trekking across oceans and continents.
Though Stevenson’s prolific writing career was cut short when he died suddenly at 44, he left behind an incredible literary legacy. His novels of high adventure and Gothic tension proved pioneering for adventure and suspense fiction. Today, Stevenson’s revolutionary fiction still inspires countless readers and writers around the world.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
###
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) was the leading English poet of the Victorian era. He was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1850 and held that position until his death in 1892.
Tennyson was born in Somersby, England. His early poetry was published alongside his brothers’, but Alfred soon surpassed the others in both talent and fame. His breakthrough came with Poems, Chiefly Lyrical published in 1830. Later celebrated works included “The Lady of Shalott,” “Ulysses,” and his masterpiece epic “In Memoriam A.H.H.” dedicated to his friend Arthur Henry Hallam.
Deeply affected by his friend Hallam’s early death, much of Tennyson’s verse reflects on mortality, loss and faith. Known for his rich and sensuous language, he exhibited superb craftsmanship and intricate rhyme schemes. Politically engaged, his work also reacted to pressing social issues as the industrial revolution transformed English society.
Immensely popular in his day, Alfred Lord Tennyson earned critical acclaim for his mastery of memorable phrasing and mythical allusion which profoundly shaped Victorian poetry. He is regarded as a consummate lyric wordsmith who left an enduring legacy and greatly influenced future generations of poets and thinkers
Jezabel Castillo is 17 years old from New York. She has been writing poetry for 5 years and strives to pursue her dream career of becoming a Published Poet
Gods Tears
by Jezabel Castillo
I have recurring
false dreams
where I find myself
to be the daughter
of winter.
Blood made of snow,
glacier shoulders,
polar bones,
just as tough
As hail rocks.
I, numbing the bites
by the frost of winds
piercing teeth.
I must possess
the power
of waves.
I shall interfere
with the velocity
of roaring melancholy.
What have I turned into?
Am I the reason
why gods tears
gives everyone rain?
###
Jezabel Castillo is 17 years old from New York. She has been writing poetry for 5 years and strives to pursue her dream career of becoming a Published Poet with her dedication to writing. She hopes to share her deep, emotional poetry with the world, as well as supporting an audience who can relate to her work.
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
‘Now they are all on their knees,’
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
‘Come; see the oxen kneel
‘In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,’
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
###
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English author best known for his novels set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex. Born in Dorset, Hardy was the son of a stonemason. He trained as an architect before turning to writing full time. Although he wrote several famous novels, including Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, Hardy considered himself more of a poet than novelist. Most of his poems reflect on nature, transience of life, and the human condition.
Hardy’s novels often dealt with characters struggling against difficult environments, relationships, and social circumstances – themes tied to his perspective as the son of a working class family. Though considered controversial in the Victorian era for progressive views on sexuality and religion, Hardy’s works were admired for rich storytelling and evocative settings in rural communities and landscapes meant to evoke Dorset life. The detailed, fictional Wessex places were based loosely on regions of southwest England familiar from the author’s upbringing.
A prolific writer, Hardy produced the bulk of his poetry in the decades following his last novel, Jude the Obscure, which received harsh criticism in 1895. In his final years, Hardy gained renown for intensely personal yet accessible verse musing philosophically on 20th century shifts toward modernity. By 1928, Hardy settled back into Dorchester, dying at the age of 87 after establishing himself as one of England’s most renowned writers blending regional realism and poetic romanticism, often around universal themes of love, irony and human suffering.
This poem is popularly known as Over the river and Through the Wood. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was a prominent American
Thanksgiving Day
by Lydia Maria Child
Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river and through the wood–
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes
And bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.
Over the river and through the wood,
To have first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring,
“Ting-a-ling-ding!”
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!
Over the river and through the wood,
And straight through the barn-yard gate.
We seem to go
Extremely slow–
It is so hard to wait!
Over the river and through the wood–
Now grandmother’s cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun!
Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie!
###
This poem is popularly known as Over the river and Through the Wood.
Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was a prominent American abolitionist, women’s rights activist, Native American rights advocate, novelist, and journalist. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Child spent most of her life championing humanitarian causes through her writings and activism.
Child found success in her 20s with her historical novel “Hobomok” (1824) and as editor of the children’s magazine The Juvenile Miscellany. In 1833, she published “An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans,” a groundbreaking treatise against slavery and early call for total abolition. The controversial pamphlet destroyed her mainstream career, but Child courageously devoted herself fully to the antislavery movement henceforth.
Over the following decades, Child wrote prolifically for abolitionist newspapers like the National Anti-Slavery Standard. She advocated for immediate emancipation,ivil liberties for African Americans, and women’s rights alongside luminaries like William Lloyd Garrison and Susan B. Anthony. Her antebellum antislavery short stories and nonfiction works like “The Quadroons” (1842) and “The Freedmen’s Book” (1865) helped galvanize public sentiment against slavery.
A woman far ahead of her time, Lydia Maria Child stands as one of the most influential and principled activists of the 19th century devoted to ending racial and gender injustice in America. Though lesser known today, her impassioned writings and organizing efforts were instrumental in bringing about the abolition of slavery and advancing human equality.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was one of the most influential and innovative American poets of the 19th century
She sights a Bird — she chuckles —
by Emily Dickinson
She sights a Bird — she chuckles —
She flattens — then she crawls —
She runs without the look of feet —
Her eyes increase to Balls —
Her Jaws stir — twitching — hungry —
Her Teeth can hardly stand —
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first —
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,
The Hopes so juicy ripening —
You almost bathed your Tongue —
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes —
And fled with every one —
###
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was one of the most influential and innovative American poets of the 19th century. Though she lived a reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts, she created a body of work that had a profound impact on American literature.
Dickinson pushed the boundaries of poetic form, rhythm, and style. She was fond of unconventional capitalization, dashes instead of traditional punctuation, and playing with the rhythms of words and lines in unexpected ways. Her poems dealt with themes of death, immortality, religion, nature, and love.
Though less than a dozen of Dickinson’s nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime, she shared her work in letters with friends and family members. After her death, Dickinson’s poems were published and she began garnering acclaim. She is now considered one of the towering figures of American poetry. Her innovative style and brave exploration of deep, philosophical themes in short lyric poems inspired later poets and helped shape the course of modern poetry.
Kim Hooper is the author of six novels, including People Who Knew Me, which was adapted into an episodic podcast from BBC Sounds.
How Ridiculous That I Am
by Kim Hooper
This morning, I fought
with my daughter about
her refusal to take another
bite of vanilla-flavored
Greek yogurt while, a world
away, other mothers fought
for their children to live
another day.
On that small strip
of land, two million people
wait on death row, sentenced
to terror for the crime
of existing. Half of them,
children. So many
children. One killed every
ten minutes, the headline
reads. The post below it—a
joke about the inconvenience
of the end of Daylight Savings.
Dawg it feel like it’s 14pm.
I laugh and then wonder how
such a thing is possible—
how can any human being laugh
now, or ever again?
I am stressed about jury duty
and the Santa Ana winds making
my eyes burn and the dog-sitting
I shouldn’t have agreed to and
the school closure on Veterans Day
when I have to work at my job,
spending hours on Zoom calls
about how to better sell
expensive beauty products
to women who feel inadequate
without them.
How ridiculous that I am
capable of stress when there are
no airstrikes here, no bombs
dropping like meteors from the sky,
when I have food and water
and shelter and the basic
assurance that my daughter
and I will be alive tomorrow.
How ridiculous that I am
capable of brushing my teeth
and taking my vitamins and
bookmarking pad thai recipes
without sobbing about
the chubby baby arms
sticking out of rubble.
How ridiculous that I am,
when so many are not.
Tonight, we will watch
Fancy Nancy and lick popsicles
and I will tell her a bedtime
story about unicorns and
magic and think about
all those children, so many
children, who will never believe
in unicorns or magic
because even if they live,
they’ve seen too much
to believe in anything.
I will let my daughter sleep
with me and she will pull
all the sheets to her side and
I will wake up cold, perturbed.
How ridiculous that I am
anything but overjoyed to
watch her sleeping face,
mouth open, eyelashes fluttering.
How ridiculous that I am
anything less than grateful
for the warmth of her body,
the smell of her hair—fruity
from the detangler spray.
How ridiculous that I am,
when so many are not.
###
Kim Hooper is the author of six novels, including People Who Knew Me, which was adapted into an episodic podcast from BBC Sounds. She lives in southern California with her daughter and too many pets.
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was an American lyrical poet associated with the early 20th century’s “poetry renaissance” in America.
Sappho
by Sara Teasdale
The twilight’s inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running, till the night was black,
Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand
And quiver with the winds from off the sea?
Ah, quietly the shingle waits the tides
Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me
Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the sea is bitterer than death.
Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more
To thee, God’s daughter, powerful as God,
It is that thou hast made my life too sweet
To hold the added sweetness of a song.
There is a quiet at the heart of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace.
I hold my peace, my Cleis, on my heart;
And softer than a little wild bird’s wing
Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.
Ah, never any more when spring like fire
Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,
Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude
Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus’ lyre,
Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna’s voice.
Ah, never with a throat that aches with song,
Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,
Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love
The quiver and the crying of my heart.
Still I remember how I strove to flee
The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head
To hurry faster, but upon the ground
I saw two winged shadows side by side,
And all the world’s spring passion stifled me.
Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,
No lonely place where thou hast never trod,
No desert thou hast left uncarpeted
With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.
In many guises didst thou come to me;
I saw thee by the maidens while they danced,
Phaon allured me with a look of thine,
In Anactoria I knew thy grace,
I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;
But never wholly, soul and body mine,
Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.
Now I have found the peace that fled from me;
Close, close, against my heart I hold my world.
Ah, Love that made my life a lyric cry,
Ah, Love that tuned my lips to lyres of thine,
I taught the world thy music, now alone
I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.
###
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was an American lyrical poet associated with the early 20th century’s “poetry renaissance” in America. Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri and began writing poetry as a child. She published her first poetry collection, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, in 1907. Teasdale went on to publish several more collections including Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911), Rivers to the Sea (1915), and Flame and Shadow (1920). The poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” from her 1920 collection is one of her most famous works. Teasdale’s poetry was known for its lyrical style, romantic themes, and focus on nature and love. She won the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1918 for her 1917 collection Love Songs. Plagued by poor health for much of her life, Teasdale committed suicide in 1933 at age 48. Her lyrical and romantic poems left a legacy and influenced later poets.
