A Long, Long Sleep, A Famous Sleep by Emily Dickinson

A Long, Long Sleep, A Famous Sleep

by Emily Dickinson (Poem 582)

A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
That makes no show for dawn
By stretch of limb or stir of lid,—
An independent one.

Was ever idleness like this?
Within a hut of stone
To bask the centuries away
Nor once look up for noon?

There is something both eerie and tender in these eight lines. Emily Dickinson’s poem opens with the rhythm of rest, a “famous sleep” that suggests death, not as an end but as an enduring state of being. The “independent one” is beyond the cycles of morning and noon, detached from time, yet curiously alive in our imagination.

Death here is not portrayed as tragic; rather, it is stillness without suffering, idleness without regret. The “hut of stone” reminds us of the grave, but also of solitude, a sanctuary from motion and measure. Dickinson transforms what might seem a bleak image into an act of cosmic repose.

When I read these words aloud, I felt a kind of reverent hush. There is no fear in this poem, only acceptance, a surrender to what lies beyond waking. It reminds me how rarely we allow ourselves to be still, to imagine existence without striving or movement. Dickinson’s voice whispers across the centuries, asking us to consider that eternity might not be loud or radiant, but quietly restful.

Perhaps that is the deeper invitation of this poem: to recognize that rest itself. The long, long sleep is not an absence of life, but a continuation of being in another form.

A Long, Long Sleep, A Famous Sleep by Emily Dickinson – Rebecca's Reading Room

As I recited this poem, I was struck by how Dickinson frames death not as darkness, but as independence, a release from the tyranny of time. The line “To bask the centuries away” lingers with me, an image of peaceful endurance. It made me wonder: if we could “bask” within the moments of our lives, instead of rushing through them, might we glimpse a little eternity even now?

Thank you for joining me in the Poetry Salon.

Until the next poem unfolds,

Rebecca

https://youtu.be/YrdOl8oSqj4?si=75qv1yfpdzooF0at

The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling

This was my first reading of Rudyard Kipling’s The Way Through the Woods, and it felt less like discovering a text than stepping into a presence—something waiting, insistent, profound.

It tells of a road, closed seventy years ago, now hidden beneath trees, anemones, and the quiet lives of doves and badgers. The forest has reclaimed what human hands once cut open, and time itself has buried the memory.

The Way Through the Woods

by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

On the surface, it is a poem of erasure. There was once a road; now there is no road. Yet Kipling shifts the ground beneath us. If you enter the woods on a summer evening, he writes, you may hear hoofbeats and the swish of skirts—the sound of travelers who still ride the old path. It is as though memory itself lingers in the air, haunting the present with its unseen presence.

Kipling knew loss. By the time this poem appeared in Rewards and Fairies (1910), he had already faced grief, and more would come—the devastating loss of his son in the First World War. The road in the poem feels like an image of memory itself: once clear, now overgrown, yet still alive with whispers. The ghostly riders are not frightening; they are tender reminders that what we lose does not vanish entirely. It moves differently through time.

What makes the poem all the more powerful is its recognition of nature’s steady triumph. The woods outlast the road. Rain and weather undo human plans. In the end, it is the trees and the night air that remain. Nature both conceals and heals, folding human absence into her vast endurance.

The Way Through the Woods invites us to hold two truths together: that we are haunted by what is gone, and that life continues in its own rhythms beyond us. In that sense, it is not just a ghost poem or a meditation on memory—it is also an ecological vision. Kipling reminds us that human marks are temporary, while the earth carries on, resilient and self-renewing.

To walk into the woods at dusk is to enter that mystery: to know that loss is real, yet so is continuity. There is no road through the woods, and yet—if we listen—we might still hear the sound of passing riders, steady and sure.

May we walk gently, listening for the whispers of the woods.

Rebecca

Postscript: Rudyard Kipling’s name often brings to mind empire, adventure, and the rhythms of marching verse. Yet The Way Through the Woods, first published in 1910 in Rewards and Fairies, reveals another voice: quieter, haunted, more attuned to absence than conquest.

Rewards and Fairies was itself a curious and beautiful creation—a mixture of short stories and poems, intended as a sequel to Puck of Pook’s Hill. In both books, Kipling draws on the figure of Puck, the mischievous sprite of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to conjure ghosts of England’s past for two children, Dan and Una. Each story is followed by a poem, almost like an echo that lingers after the tale.

The Way Through the Woods was paired with the story “Marklake Witches.” That tale, set in Sussex during the Napoleonic Wars, tells of a French émigré doctor and the suspicion surrounding Ollyett, a young woman branded a witch for her healing knowledge. It explores superstition, memory, and the endurance of old beliefs. The poem serves as a companion piece, shifting the focus from haunted human stories to the haunted landscape itself. Just as superstition lingers in the story, so too do ghostly hoofbeats linger in the woods where a road once lay.

Seen in this light, the pairing is deliberate: Kipling was exploring how the past never fully disappears. Whether through human memory and myth, or through the land itself, we live among echoes of what came before.

Here, Kipling becomes less the bard of empire and more the poet of impermanence. He gives us a vision where nature is stronger than human memory, and where the past lingers as sound and shadow rather than as solid ground. For readers today, this may be his most enduring legacy: not the imperial storyteller, but the writer who understood how loss and healing, time and memory, all move through the woods together.

#poetry #poetryInTheAfternoon #poetryInTheEvening #poetryInTheMorning #poetrySalon #rudyardKipling #theWayThroughTheWoods

October by Robert Frost

October: A Celebration of Quiet Resilience

When I first recited “October” in 2020, the world was standing still. Streets were empty, gatherings were postponed, and even the air seemed to hesitate. Yet in that pause, poetry found its voice again. Frost’s gentle invocation to ‘retard the sun with gentle mist’ became a kind of prayer. Not for escape, but for endurance.

Resilience does not always roar. Sometimes, it whispers ‘slow, slow.’ It asks us to hold on just a little longer, to find beauty even in uncertainty. In Frost’s world, the falling of each leaf is not a loss but part of the rhythm of survival. Each pause, each delay, each quiet act of attention becomes an affirmation that life continues in tender, imperfect, and enduring ways.

https://youtu.be/fXtzCRWjXu0?si=3bpLzZakJ6cft2Pt

Looking back now, “October” reminds me how we learned to adapt: to find comfort in small rituals, to connect through words when touch was forbidden, and to let art and poetry become our gathering places. The mist that Frost imagined became, for us, a shelter with a soft veil through which we could still see light.

October

By Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

So today, as leaves again turn to gold and wind stirs through the trees, I read “October” not as a farewell, but as a renewal. It is a reminder that even in seasons of loss, resilience grows quietly, leaf by leaf, word by word, morning by morning.

October by Robert Frost – Rebecca's Reading Room

Until the next page turns,

Rebecca

#Autumn #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetryRecitation #PoetrySalon #RebeccaSReadingRoom #RobertFrost

Celebrating Halloween with Carl Sandburg

Happy Halloween!

Why do we love Halloween? Maybe it’s the thrill of shadows, the whispered stories of ghosts and goblins, or the sheer joy of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary with costumes, pumpkins, and flickering candles. Halloween is a night where imagination takes the lead — where even the wind seems to carry secrets.

Tonight, I’m celebrating Halloween with Carl Sandburg, who had a gift for finding poetry in the everyday. His short poem, Theme in Yellow, doesn’t dwell on fright or fear. Instead, he turns to the pumpkin — that bright, round companion of autumn — and gives it a mischievous voice. The jack-o’-lantern smiles with a glow that is equal parts harvest warmth and playful trickery.

Sandburg’s images — yellow balls on the hills, orange and tawny gold in the cornfields, the harvest moon rising — remind us that Halloween isn’t just about spooks and scares. It’s also about autumn’s abundance, the laughter of children, and the community that gathers around the simple magic of light in the dark.

So when you see a pumpkin glowing on a porch tonight, think of Sandburg’s words, and know that you are part of a tradition that stretches across fields, front steps, and generations.

https://youtu.be/f2egByr2m8I?si=kkxQkBXSHufU6YSL

Theme in Yellow

by Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

As October draws to a close, I am reminded that Halloween is more than a night of costumes and candy. It is a pause at the threshold between seasons — a moment when the glow of a pumpkin lantern can carry us back to the wonder of childhood and forward into the quiet of November.

Carl Sandburg’s Theme in Yellow shows me that even in the simplest of images — a smiling jack-o’-lantern, a harvest moon — there is both playfulness and grace. This Halloween, I celebrate not only the mysteries of the night, but also the gift of imagination that lets us find light, even in the gathering dark.

Thank you for joining me in celebrating Halloween with Carl Sandburg. Until next time we meet, keep reading and reciting poetry.

Rebecca

Celebrating Halloween with Carl Sandburg – Rebecca's Reading Room

#CarlSandburg #HappyHalloween #PoetryInTheEvening #RebeccaSReadingRoom #ThemeInYellow

Herman Melville, Poet of Contradictions

Until recently, I only knew Herman Melville as the author of Moby Dick and other seafaring novels. Imagine my surprise when I came across his poem Art and discovered another side of Melville – the poet. I had not realized that in his later years, when his novels were largely dismissed, he poured his creative energies into verse.

Art

Herman Melville (1819–1891)

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.

In Art, Melville captures in a handful of lines the tension every artist knows: the collision of flame and frost, patience and urgency, humility and pride. Creation, he tells us, is no gentle unfolding but a wrestling match with the angel. Jacob’s midnight struggle becomes the artist’s daily one: a demand for strength, vulnerability, and devotion all at once.

Discovering Melville’s poetry is like finding a quiet chamber off a grand hall. It is smaller, more intimate, but no less profound. Here we meet not only the sailor of prose but the pilgrim of paradox, who insists that art is born where contradictions refuse to cancel one another out, and instead fuse into something entirely new.

Reading the poem, Art, I felt a kinship with Melville’s honesty about how hard creativity can be. He doesn’t romanticize it—he calls it wrestling. And yet, in naming the struggle, he offers a kind of encouragement: art is forged not in perfection but in paradox.

Until the next page, may we meet courageously the contradictions that shape art and life.

Rebecca

Postscript: By the time Melville turned to poetry in the 1860s, his novels had been largely dismissed or ignored. Moby-Dick, now hailed as a masterpiece, was a commercial failure in his lifetime. The disappointment must have been excruciating for a writer who had poured so much of his spirit into prose. He spent much of his later career working as a customs inspector in New York, feeling misunderstood and financially strained.

It was in this context that Melville turned to poetry, publishing volumes such as Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) and Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876). His verse wrestles with disillusionment, mortality, and the silence of God, which was a reflection on both his personal struggles and the upheavals of his time, including the American Civil War.

His poetry was not the happiest of work, but it was deeply honest. To read it is to encounter a man who continued to wrestle with the largest questions of existence long after the world seemed to turn away. That ongoing struggle, far from diminishing his voice, may be what gives his poetry its lasting resonance.

#art #HermanMelville #Poetry #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetrySalon

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter By Li Bai (Li Po), translated by Ezra Pound (1915)

Some poems arrive like a sudden tide — they rise in your heart before you even understand why. The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, written by Li Bai in the 8th century and translated by Ezra Pound in 1915, came to me that way.

When I read it for the first time, something inside me stilled. I felt an ache that was both personal and universal — the kind of longing that crosses centuries and continents, binding us to someone who lived long ago and yet seems to be speaking directly to us. By the time I reached the final lines, I wanted to cry.

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

By Li Bai (Li Po), translated by Ezra Pound (1915)

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-tō-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Chō-fū-Sa.

In just a few stanzas, we witness an entire life unfold. The young wife begins in childhood, pulling flowers by the gate while her future husband plays nearby. She remembers the shy awkwardness of marriage, eyes lowered, uncertain. Then love deepens until it becomes a vow of permanence — “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours… forever.” And then comes absence: the months apart, the quiet changes in her surroundings, the way even yellow butterflies wound her because they remind her of what she is missing.

Ezra Pound’s translation preserves not only Li Bai’s imagery but also the emotional heartbeat of the original. His free verse is plain, unadorned, yet every detail feels weighted with meaning: the moss grown too deep to clear away, the sound of monkeys overhead, the paired butterflies drifting through August air.

What moves me most is the steadfastness of the wife’s love. She doesn’t simply miss her husband — she carries him with her, shaping her days and her memories around his absence. In the end, she reaches outward: “If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, please let me know beforehand, and I will come out to meet you as far as Chō-fū-Sa.” It is not only a plea; it is an offering, a willingness to bridge the distance between them.

This is why the poem still feels alive today. It is not about an 8th-century river merchant and his wife alone. It is about how love endures across absence, how memory keeps someone present even when they are far away, and how longing itself becomes a form of devotion.

My Takeaway

Reading this poem reminded me that connection is not always about proximity. Sometimes the truest form of love is the willingness to hold another person in your heart, trusting that the bond will endure until you meet again. And in that waiting, there is beauty as well as ache.

Until the next page turns,

Rebecca

Genre Note

This poem belongs to the tradition of “classical Chinese lyric poetry”, written by Li Bai (701–762), one of the great voices of the Tang Dynasty. It is also an ”epistolary poem”, written in the form of a letter from a wife to her absent husband. When Ezra Pound translated it in 1915, he shaped it into “modernist free verse”, blending the intimacy of Li Bai’s original with the clarity and immediacy of early modernist style. Thus, the poem lives at the crossroads of traditions: classical, lyrical, epistolary, and modernist.

#EzraPound #LiBai #LiPo #ModernestPoetry #Poetry #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetrySalon #TheRiverMerchantSWifeALetter

S2 E19 We Will Remember Them

On November 11th, Canada observes Remembrance Day.  

Today, we will remember the members of our armed forces who have died in the line of duty. Across Canada, there will be a moment of silence at the 11th hour.  In the year 1918, WWI hostilities formally ended “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.”

I am wearing a red poppy, which is the Canadian symbol of Remembrance Day based on the poem “In Flanders Fields.”

On May 3, 1915, Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was moved to write the poem after he presided over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier, Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle Ypres. 

In Flanders Fields by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

May we all continue to seek peaceful solutions…together.

https://anchor.fm/rebeccas-reading-room/episodes/We-Will-Remember-Them-e1qiqm7

#InFlandersFields #JohnMcCrae #LaurenceBinyon #PoetryInTheEvening #RemembranceDay

Meeting up with Elizabeth Madox Roberts

This morning, I invite you to linger with a poet who might be unfamiliar: Elizabeth Madox Roberts, born in 1881 in rural Kentucky. Though she became widely known for her modernist novels, she also wrote poetry that carried the cadence of the fields, the garden rows, and the voices of children at play. She lived at a time when the closeness of people to the land was simply a fact of life, when childhood unfolded outdoors, and when attention to the natural world was as ordinary as breathing.

The Rabbit

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

When they said the time to hide was mine,
I hid back under a thick grape vine.
And while I was still for the time to pass,
A little gray thing came out of the grass.

He hopped his way through the melon bed
And sat down close by a cabbage head.
He sat down close where I could see,
And his big still eyes looked hard at me,

His big eyes bursting out of the rim,
And I looked back very hard at him.

In “The Rabbit”, Roberts gives us more than a charming rhyme. She records a moment of profound stillness: a child hiding in play, a rabbit appearing from the grass, and a gaze shared between them. Nothing more happens, and yet in that gaze lies a recognition—one creature seeing another, fully present in the moment.

When I read this poem today, I feel Roberts inviting us to slow down and recover the art of attention. We live in a world where distractions multiply and our time is pulled in every direction, yet here is a reminder that to pause and look—really look—is to discover wonder again. The child’s gaze at the rabbit teaches us that attentiveness is a form of love, that nature still waits to meet us if we step outside and give it a chance, and that children, even now, carry within them the same deep curiosity that Roberts witnessed in her own time. Perhaps the real lesson for us is that these small encounters matter. They shape how we see the world, and they remind us that even the simplest rhymes can carry wisdom across generations.

I believe Roberts is teaching us that attention itself is an act of love. To look closely, to notice without hurry, to acknowledge another life—even for a fleeting moment—is to step back into the mystery and beauty of being alive.

Thank you for sharing a Saturday morning moment with me in Rebecca’s Reading Room. May your weekend be filled with small encounters of wonder and stillness.

Rebecca

Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881–1941) was a Kentucky poet and novelist, best known for her novel “The Time of Man”. Her writing, lyrical yet rooted in realism, explored the bond between people, land, and the ordinary details of daily life. She was part of the Southern Renaissance and admired for bringing a poetic voice to rural experience.

Elizabeth’s poetry collection “Under the Tree” can be found on Gutenberg Press.

#ElizabethMadoxRoberts #Nature #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetrySalon #TheRabbit

September Morning in Nebraska

Nebraska is my mother’s birthplace, a state of wide skies and endless fields. My own visits there remain vivid—especially September mornings when the air carried both warmth and a slight chill, as if the land itself was pausing between seasons.

When I came across this poem by C. M. Barrow, I felt as if someone had captured those memories in verse.

A September Morning in Nebraska

by C. M. Barrow

The sun has not yet risen, but his golden glow,
Lights up the misty portals of the far off east;
The wavering shadows o’er the prairies come and go,
And all the eerie sounds of night have ceased.

Nature’s own songsters, from the cotton trees,
Fill all the languorous air with melody.
The corn fields rustle in the gentle morning breeze,
And from the coming dawn the night-mist flees.

For me, this poem is more than a description of a landscape. It is a return to memory. Nebraska mornings, my mother’s voice recalling her childhood, my own fleeting visits where September shimmered with both promise and farewell.

My grandparents were farmers, and their home stood on a ridge overlooking a valley that seemed to stretch endlessly to the horizon. I remember the smell of grass in the early morning and the sound of birds settling into the dusk when we walked at night. Standing on that ridge, I felt both small and infinite—at one with nature, part of a world that was larger than myself, yet deeply familiar.

September mornings remind me of the rhythm of change, of how beauty resides in transience. The prairie teaches me to pause, to notice the shimmer of dew before it evaporates, to welcome both warmth and chill, knowing each has its season.

Until the next page turns…

Rebecca

Postscript: I searched for more information about C. M. Barrow, the poet of A September Morning in Nebraska, but very little can be found. His name doesn’t appear in standard poetry anthologies or library archives, which suggests he may have been a local or regional writer whose work was shared in newspapers or community collections rather than in widely published books.

Perhaps this is part of the beauty of poetry—it can live quietly, carried forward by a single poem that speaks across time, even if the poet remains in the shadows.

#Autumn #CMBarrow #Poetry #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetryInTheMorning #PoetrySalon #SeptemberMorningInNebraska

It Was Summer When I Found You: A Reflection on Sappho

There are voices in history that never quite fade—only soften, like a song carried by the wind across centuries. Sappho is one of those voices.

I recently came across a poem attributed to her, though likely shaped through modern interpretation:

It was summer when I found you
In the meadow long ago,
And the golden vetch was growing
By the shore.

Did we falter when love took us
With a gust of great desire?
Does the barley bid the wind wait
In his course?

It’s a gentle but powerful piece, evoking the golden stillness of summer and the unstoppable force of love. The imagery is tactile—meadows, shorelines, golden vetch—and yet the heart of the poem lies in the final lines, where Sappho (or the poet speaking in her voice) asks: Did we falter? Could we have resisted love, even if we tried?

In that question lies something ancient and eternal.

Sappho lived over 2,600 years ago on the island of Lesbos, and yet she wrote with astonishing intimacy about longing, friendship, heartbreak, and the rhythms of nature. Most of her work survives only in fragments, but those fragments breathe with feeling. She reminds us that love is not always chosen—it sweeps us up like the wind through barley fields.

For a long time, I struggled to connect with Sappho as a person. Her world seemed too distant, too veiled in myth. But this poem—this moment in a summer meadow—brought her close. I no longer needed to understand her in the academic sense. I only needed to listen.

Perhaps that is the gift of poetry: to create bridges between times, between strangers, between hearts. Sappho once wrote:

“someone will remember us, I say, even in another time.”

Today, I do.

Thank you for joining me in the Reading Room.
Until next time keep reading and reciting poetry!

Rebecca

I’m currently away on a brief blog break, so comments are turned off for now. Thank you for visiting Rebecca’s Reading Room—your presence here is always cherished. I look forward to reconnecting with you soon. 🌿

#Ancient #Poetry #PoetryInTheEvening #Sappho #Summer