January Poems

Table of Contents

1. January

   by Ruby Archer

   The snow is diamond for a fairy's feet,
   Blithely and bonnily she trips along,
   Her lips a-carol with a merry song,
   And in her eyes the meaning. "Life is sweet!"
   The rhythm of youth is in her pulses' beat,
   The lissome form is beautiful and strong,
   The happy heart is innocent of wrong.
   Young Hope incarnate seems the earth to greet,
   How fair is she—just pinker than the snow.
   Behold—a roguish coyness in her face!
   Ah see—a spray of saucy mistletoe
   Is nestling in her hair. A chase! A chase!
   A gleeful laugh,—the vision bright has paled,
   Is lost in clouds her laughing breath exhaled.
   

2. January

   by Rebecca Hey

   Keen blows the bitter spirit of the North,
   And, like a warrior foil'd, with powerless beam
   The sun eyes wistfully the frost-bound stream,
   As if he long'd, though vainly, to call forth
   His by-gone strength, that he might deck the earth
   In all her summer beauty, and set free
   River and brooklet, till, towards the sea
   Onward they bounded with melodious mirth.
   But many a storm, ere that may be, shall blow,
   And many a cloud frown darkling o'er the sky;
   And be it so, if but affection's glow
   Play round the lips, and brighten in the eye,
   When round the hearth long-sever'd friends do meet,
   (So ancient usage claims,) the opening to greet.
   

3. I'm January

   by Annette Wynne

   I'm January bringing you
   A year of days—all brand, brand new;
   I step upon the frosty ground.
   When chimes and sleighbells ring around;
   You welcome me and children sing,
   And joy comes into everything.
   I bring you love and lots of cheer,
   And work and friends for all the year.
   

4. If It Were January All the Year

   by Annette Wynne

   
   

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   If it were January all the year,
   I wonder if I'd like it here,
   Finding every place I go—
   Snow, snow, always snow!
   

   Snow upon the lane and street,
   Snow wherever children meet,
   And the houses made of snow,
   And the school where children go.
   

   Do you think I'd grow to be
   A child quite different from me,
   Who'd never seen a thing but snow?
   Would I be an Eskimo?
   

5. A Calendar of Sonnets: January

   by Helen Hunt Jackson

   O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
   What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
   Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
   Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
   The streams than under ice. June could not hire
   Her roses to forego the strength they learn
   In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn
   The bridges thou dost lay where men desire
   In vain to build. O Heart, when Love's sun goes
   To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,
   Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.
   Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.
   Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
   The winter is the winter's own release.
   

6. Ode Written On The First Of January

   by Robert Southey

   
   

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   Come melancholy Moralizer—come!
   Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
   With me engarland now
   The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!
   

   Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
   I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
   For well the funeral song
   Befits this solemn hour.
   

   But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
   With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
   This consecrated day,
   To Mirth and Indolence.
   

   Mortal! whilst Fortune with benignant hand
   Fills to the brim thy cup of happiness,
   Whilst her unclouded sun
   Illumes thy summer day,
   

   Canst thou rejoice—rejoice that Time flies fast?
   That Night shall shadow soon thy summer sun?
   That swift the stream of Years
   Rolls to Eternity?
   

   If thou hast wealth to gratify each wish,
   If Power be thine, remember what thou art—
   Remember thou art Man,
   And Death thine heritage!
   

   Hast thou known Love? does Beauty's better sun
   Cheer thy fond heart with no capricious smile,
   Her eye all eloquence,
   Her voice all harmony?
   

   Oh state of happiness! hark how the gale
   Moans deep and hollow o'er the leafless grove!
   Winter is dark and cold—
   Where now the charms of Spring?
   

   Sayst thou that Fancy paints the future scene
   In hues too sombrous? that the dark-stol'd Maid
   With stern and frowning front
   Appals the shuddering soul?
   

   And would'st thou bid me court her faery form
   When, as she sports her in some happier mood,
   Her many-colour'd robes
   Dance varying to the Sun?
   

   Ah vainly does the Pilgrim, whose long road
   Leads o'er the barren mountain's storm-vext height,
   With anxious gaze survey
   The fruitful far-off vale.
   

   Oh there are those who love the pensive song
   To whom all sounds of Mirth are dissonant!
   There are who at this hour
   Will love to contemplate!
   

   For hopeless Sorrow hails the lapse of Time,
   Rejoicing when the fading orb of day
   Is sunk again in night,
   That one day more is gone.
   

   And he who bears Affliction's heavy load
   With patient piety, well pleas'd he knows
   The World a pilgrimage,
   The Grave the inn of rest.
   

7. January

   by Ellwood Roberts

   
   

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   The short midwinter days are here,
   The nights are frosty now and chill—
   The solemn midnight of the year—
   The snow lies deep on vale and hill.
   No longer runs the streamlet nigh,
   The ice has bound its waters fast;
   An Arctic wind is sweeping by,
   The bare trees shiver in the blast.
   

   How changed the Schuylkill's tide! no more
   It sparkles in the noonday light;
   The ice extends from shore to shore,
   Its strength increasing, day and night.
   The skaters o'er its surface fly,
   In rhythmic motion, all the day,
   While dark clouds sweep across the sky,
   Foreboding tempests on the way.
   

   And soon we see the storm begin,
   All day the snowflakes scurry past,
   All night we hear the tempest's din,
   The forests bend beneath the blast.
   In whirling clouds the snow is hurled,
   Along the hillside, down the glen;
   Another day the whole bright world
   Is shut by drifts beyond our ken.
   

   But soon the sun resumes his sway,
   His noontide beams are warm and bright;
   The stubborn ice-bridge yields by day,
   Though drear and sombre falls the night.
   Alternate thaw and storm and cold,
   With snowdrifts deep and changeful sky,
   The earth in chill embrace enfold—
   And so the month goes slowly by.
   

   Midwinter days and nights so drear,
   With storm-clouds sweeping o'er the sky—
   The solemn midnight of the year
   Soon pass and leave no token nigh.
   Bare trees that quake beneath the blast,
   Will yet be clothed in leafage bright,
   And days so chill—the Winter past—
   Be bathed in floods of Spring-time light.
   

8. On Seeing a Crocus and a Dandelion in January

   by Harvey Carson Grumbine

   
   

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   The weary watcher at the window stands
   With moaning heart all dolorous and forlorn;
   "Ah, when will break the lilac-scented morn?
   When will these icy fetters burst their bands?"
   The weary watcher wrings his pleading hands:
   "And are my hopes of all fruition shorn—
   The sunnier smiles of May and April worn?
   Has winter frozen, then, Time's hour-glass sands?"
   

   Behold a crocus, in his eye a tear,
   Meek tribute to the season's sorrows old,
   And there a dandelion flaming bold:
   "We are the changelings of the yester-year,
   
   Strewn flowers fallen from his funeral bier; We too must pass into his grave grown cold."
   

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