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 THE PLEA OF THE MIDSUMMER FAIRIES AND OTHER FAIRY POEMS is an eBook of gorgeous, whimsical, nineteenth century fairy poetry by Thomas Hood.  The poems are whimsical, humorous, and gorgeous. Suitable for all ages and great for reading out loud.  This week you can name your own price for this book, even if it is only a dollar.  This special preview edition is in PDF form only. It will be out in Kindle, ePUB, and MS Reader in time for Christmas.  If you like it, please tell all your friends.  I also need review quotes.  Thank you.  

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THE DREAM FAIRY

A little fairy comes at night,
Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown’
with silver spots upon her wings,
And from the moon she flutters down.

She has a little silver wand,
And when a good child goes to bed
She waves her wand from right to left
And makes a circle round her head,

And then it dreams of pleasant things,
Of fountains filled with fairy fish,
And trees that bear delicious fruit,
And bow their branches at a wish;

Of arbours filled with dainty scents
From lovely flowers that never fade,
Bright ‘flies that flitter in the sun,
And glow-worms shining in the shade;

And talking birds with gifted tongues
For singing songs and telling tales,
And pretty dwarfs to show the way
Through the fairy hills and fairy dales.

from THE PLEA OF THE MIDSUMMER FAIRIES AND OTHER FAIRY POEMS

Two Cinquains

by

Adelaide Crapsey (American, 1878-1914)

November Night

Listen. .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

Niagara

Seen on a Night in November

How frail

Above the bulk

Of crashing water hangs,

Autumn, evanescent, wan,

The moon.

November Night

Listen. .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

Adelaide Crapsey (American, 1878-1914)

Ithaca

by
Constantine P Cavafy (20th. Century Greece)

When you set out for Ithaka ask that your way be long, full of adventure, full of instruction. The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon - do not fear them: such as these you will never find as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare emotion touch your spirit and your body. The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon - you will not meet them unless you carry them in your soul, unless your soul raise them up before you. Ask that your way be long. At many a Summer dawn to enter with what gratitude, what joy - ports seen for the first time; to stop at Phoenician trading centres, and to buy good merchandise, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, and sensuous perfumes of every kind, sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can; to visit many Egyptian cities, to gather stores of knowledge from the learned. Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don't in the least hurry the journey. Better it last for years, so that when you reach the island you are old, rich with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth. Ithaka gave you a splendid journey. Without her you would not have set out. She hasn't anything else to give you. And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you. So wise you have become, of such experience, that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

Gathering Leaves

by 

Robert Frost (20th. Century American)

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

Two Autumn Haiku by Issa

1819

.名月や膝を枕の子があらば
meigetsu ya hiza [wo] makura no ko ga araba

harvest moon--
my lap would be a pillow
if my child were here

1819

.秋風やむしりたがりし赤い花
aki kaze ya mushiritagarishi akai hana

autumn wind--
red flowers she wanted
to pick

[These poems were written shortly after the death of the poet's infant daughter, Sato.  Viewing the harvest moon would normally be festive.]

Translations by David G. Lanoue.  His website has ten thousand haiku by Issa.  http://haikuguy.com/issa/haiku.php?code=

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

William Butler Yeats Ireland, 1919

In Hardwood Groves

The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers
However it is in some other world
I know that this is the way in ours.


Robert Frost

TWO AUTUMN POEMS

Chinese lettering. Ike, Gyokuran, 1728-1784, Calligrapher

The autumn leaves 
On Mount Tatsuta
looking like brocade
intensify their colors
in the autumn shower 


Perhaps because even the underleaves are colored
the autumn foliage on Mount Tatsuta
is increasingly brilliant
looking like brocade.


 Gyokuran Ike, Japan, undated, Middle Edo Period

AUTUMN

  
 ThE morns are meeker than they were,
 The nuts are getting brown;
 The berry's cheek is plumper,
 The rose is out of town.
 The maple wears a gayer scarf,
 The field a scarlet gown.
 Lest I should be old-fashioned,
 I'll put a trinket on.


Emily Dickinson 

Ode Autumn by Thomas Hood

ODE.

AUTUMN.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand shadowless like Silence, listening

To silence, for no lonely bird would sing

Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,

Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;

Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright

With tangled gossamer that fell by night,

Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

Where are the songs of Summer?—With the sun,

Opening the dusky eyelids of the south,

Till shade and silence waken up as one,

And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.

Where are the merry birds?—Away, away,

On panting wings through the inclement skies,

Lest owls should prey

Undazzled at noon-day,

And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.

Where are the blooms of Summer?—In the west,

Blushing their last to the last sunny hours.

When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest

Like tearful Proserpine, snatch'd from her flow'rs

To a most gloomy breast.

Where is the pride of Summer,—the green prime,—

The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three

On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime

Trembling,—and one upon the old oak tree!

Where is the Dryad's immortality?—

Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,

Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through

In the smooth holly's green eternity.

The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard,

The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain,

And honey been save stored

The sweets of summer in their luscious cells;

The swallows all have wing'd across the main;

But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,

And sighs her tearful spells

Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.

Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone,

With the last leaves for a love-rosary;

Whilst all the wither'd world looks drearily,

Like a dim picture of the drownëd past

In the hush'd mind's mysterious far-away,

Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last

Into that distance, gray upon the gray.

O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded

Under the languid downfall of her hair;

She wears a coronal of flowers faded

Upon her forehead, and a face of care;—

There is enough of wither'd everywhere

To make her bower,—and enough of gloom;

There is enough of sadness to invite,

If only for the rose that died, whose doom

Is Beauty's,—she that with the living bloom

Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light:

There is enough of sorrowing, and quite

Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,—

Enough of chilly droppings from her bowl;

Enough of fear and shadowy despair,

To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!

To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
    Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
    With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
    And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
        To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
        For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
    Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
    Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
    Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
        Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
    Steady thy laden head across a brook;
    Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
        Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring?  Ay, where are they?
    Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
    And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
    Among the river sallows, borne aloft
        Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
    Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
    The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
        And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken

by 

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.