Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today's Monday, March 15th,

2000, 2021. Today's poem is by an American poet. He was also a dramatist. He's name is William von Moody.

He lived from July 8th of 1869 until October and the 17th of 1910.

He is a semi-forgotten poet now, perhaps partly because he died young. He died

of brain cancer at only 41 years old. But he wrote a number of works that are pretty highly

thought of among, you know, certain particularly academic circles where they're remembered a little

bit more.

And the poem that I'm going to read to you today is called A Grey Day.

This is a poem that I discovered.

I had not heard it before through Carol Ruman's poem of the week,

which is a column that she does in The Guardian.

If you go to the Guardian.com and then search for Carol Ruhn's, R-U-M-E-N-S, you'll find her poem of the week. So I want to give her credit for pointing me towards this poem,

and I want to share it with you. And then I'm going to also share some of her thoughts on this poem,

since she is the one that directed it to me. I'll just share a couple of her comments from her article. And I hope you'll go check out the longer version of her essay on this poem and also her column, which quite often has some really

lovely poems that are lesser known, you know, as well as some of the better known ones. So here

is a gray day by William Vaughan Moody.

Gray drizzling mists the Moorland's drape.

Rain whitens the Dead Sea.

From headland dim to sullen cape, gray sails creep wearily.

I know not how that merchant man has found the heart, but tis her plan seaward her endless

course to shape.

Unreal as insects that appall a drunkard's peevish brain, or the gray deep the dories crawl,

...