A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year E-Book

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Batsford Poetry Anthologies
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 292

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

365 poems celebrating nature and the changing seasons. This is the perfect bedside companion for any nature or poetry fan, featuring famous odes from big-name poets alongside unsung poems from less-well-known writers. Each poem is chosen to chime with the natural world through the seasons. Spring is a time of hope, a season of new life with William Wordsworth's daffodils, John Clare's lambs and Christina Rossetti's birdsong. Summer shifts into a time of leisure with long idyllic holidays in the countryside. According to Henry James, the two most beautiful words in the English language were 'summer afternoon', a sentiment echoed by Edward Thomas and Emily Dickinson. John Keats, William Blake and W. H. Auden are the poets we associate with autumn and this is possibly the most poetic season. The natural world, and the human one, hold onto the last lingering memories of summer before they turn to face the oncoming hardships of winter. Amy Lowell and George Meredith perfectly frame this time of year with their silver-fringed leaves and crimson berries. Winter can be savoured in poetry, rather than endured; bleak grey days are transformed into a world of glittering frost and snow-blanketed landscapes. Even in the darkest days life continues and soon we can turn our attention to the rebirth of spring. A wonderful collection of poems that help mark the daily turn of the seasons and all the rituals marking the significant moments of the year, from Candlemas to Christmas.

Leseprobe

A NATURE POEM FOREVERY DAY OF THE YEAR

CONTENTS

JANUARY

Chill Airs and Wintry Winds

FEBRUARY

The Last Hours of Slow Winter

MARCH

I Heard a Thousand Blended Notes

APRIL

Dancing in the Breeze

MAY

A Thousand Fragrant Posies

JUNE

The Cornfield Stretched a Tender Green

JULY

The Larkspurs Stood Like Sentinels

AUGUST

The Glimmering Landscape

SEPTEMBER

Silver Fruit upon Silver Trees

OCTOBER

The Fading Many-Coloured Woods

NOVEMBER

The Trees Bow Down their Heads

DECEMBER

Winter’s Wondrous Frost

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

INDEX OF POETS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Lily and Matilda, with love.

I found the poems in the fieldsand only wrote them down.

John Clare

FURTHER READING

The following books bring our seasons to life, not just in poetry but through history, mythology, folklore and literature. This anthology would have been poorer without them:

Nick Groom, The Seasons: A Celebration of the English Year, Atlantic Books, 2013

Lia Leendertz, The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2018, Unbound, 2017

John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field, Doubleday, 2014

The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood, Doubleday, 2018

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Jane McMorland Hunter has compiled five anthologies: Favourite Poems of London, Favourite Poems of England and Classic Readings and Poems for Batsford and Poems of the First World War and Favourite Poems for the National Trust.

She also writes gardening books and works as a gardener and at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly as the Shop Scribe, compiling their annual catalogues.

Introduction

The sound of birdsong at dawn, rolling hills bathed in sunshine, piles of crisp golden leaves and snow falling silently: each signifies a particular time of year. Much of our countryside may no longer be truly ‘wild’, and our seasons may no longer conform to the reliable patterns we would like, but we all want to dream. As many of us are now slightly removed from nature, living in towns and cities and working away from the land, these dreams become ever more important.

As a nation the British have always been particularly bound to the seasons, rituals marking the significant moments of the year. It is only comparatively recently that we have, to a certain extent, subdued nature and the seasons, allowing us to regard the wilder aspects of our land through rose-tinted glasses. Poets from Geoffrey Chaucer and Michael Drayton to Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald have taken inspiration from our untamed landscapes, preserving glimpses of nature in verse.

Poetry is often read as an escape, and the perfect way to start, or end, each day are a few moments of escape into the natural world. This anthology contains a poem for every day, watching the natural world as it progresses through the seasons. Spring is a time of hope, a season of new life with William Wordsworth’s daffodils, Andrew Young’s mad March hares and Christina Rossetti’s birdsong. Summer shifts into a time of leisure with long idyllic holidays in the countryside remembered from childhood. According to Henry James, the two most beautiful words in the English language were ‘summer afternoon’, a sentiment echoed by Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning and a host of other poets. Even nature seems to know that summer is a time to relax, with flowers nodding their heads, trees rustling gently in the breeze and the sun creating long shadows as evening draws to a close. John Keats, William Blake and W. H. Auden are the poets we associate with autumn, and this is possibly the most poetic season. The natural world, and the human one, hold onto the last lingering memories of summer before they turn to face the oncoming hardships of winter. George Crabbe and George Meredith perfectly frame this time of year with their yellow leaves and red berries. Winter can be savoured in poetry, rather than endured; bleak grey days are transformed into a world of glittering frost and snow-blanketed landscapes. Even in the darkest days life continues and soon we can turn our attention to the rebirth of spring.

If one wants to plough a field one would read an agricultural manual. The point of the poetry here is to give an imaginative view of nature: owls marry pussycats, carved leopards leap into life and snow is always deep and crisp. Even though I know that tigers do not roam our fields, you are unlikely to see a phoenix and crocodiles do not inhabit our rivers, I have included them. Opinion is divided regarding enchanted woods and the Loch Ness Monster, and these too have earned a place in this anthology. Geography is not strictly accurate either; Rachel Lyman Field’s geese are more likely to be flying towards Britain rather than away from it. The point of these poems is that one can imagine. Many of the very best nature poems were actually written by educated town dwellers, relying on visits, memories or fantasy for their inspiration. It is no coincidence that so many nature poems were written during the Industrial Revolution, a time when an idealised and often sentimental view of rural life and Britain’s wild places became important.

Nature is often the starting point for a poem concerned with love, loss, life or death. Anne Batten Cristall’s Song is obviously more than a description of seasons, just as Henry King’s A Contemplation upon Flowers concerns more than a simple description of spring blooms. Whether it is the subject or the inspiration, nature is an important part of these poems.

In previous anthologies I have always, where possible, included the entire poem. For various reasons here many poems are reduced to an extract. Some were simply too long to include in their entirety. Others offer brief but vivid descriptions of the natural world within a poem. I have extracted these images, even if it means taking them out of their context. My hope is that readers will be inspired to seek out the entire poem.

Animals, birds, flowers, trees, the sea and the sky allow our imaginations to soar. This can only improve our lives:

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

From Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins

JANUARY

Chill Airs and Wintry Winds

1 JANUARY

The Year’s at the Spring

FROM PIPPA PASSES

The year’s at the spring,

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in His heaven –

All’s right with the world!

Robert Browning (1812–1889)

2 JANUARY

Eclogue I: The Months

FROM BASIL AND EDWARD

JANUARY

Ed. The moon that mounts the sun’s deserted way,

Turns the long winter night to a silver day;

But setteth golden in face of the solemn sight

Of her lord arising upon a world of white.

FEBRUARY

Ba. I have in my heart a vision of spring begun

In a sheltering wood, that feels the kiss of the sun:

And a thrush adoreth the melting day that dies

In clouds of purple afloat upon saffron skies.

MARCH

Ed. Now carol the birds at dawn, and some new lay

Announceth a homecome voyager every-day.

Beneath the tufted sallows the streamlet thrills

With the leaping trout and the gleam of the daffodils.

APRIL

Ba. Then laugheth the year; with flowers the meads are bright;

The bursting branches are tipped with flames of light:

The landscape is light; the dark clouds flee above,

And the shades of the land are a blue that is deep as love.

MAY

Ed. But if you have seen a village all red and old

In cherry-orchards a-sprinkle with white and gold,

By a hawthorn seated, or a witch-oelm flowering high,

A gay breeze making riot in the waving rye!

JUNE

Ba. Then night retires from heaven; the high winds go

A-sailing in cloud-pavilions of cavern’d snow.

O June, sweet Philomel sang thy cradle-lay;

In rosy revel thy spirit shall pass away.

JULY

Ed. Heavy is the green of the fields, heavy the trees

With foliage hang, drowsy the hum of bees

In the thund’rous air: the crowded scents lie low:

Thro’ tangle of weeds the river runneth slow.

AUGUST

Ba. A reaper with dusty shoon and hat of straw

On the yellow field, his scythe in his armës braw:

Beneath the tall grey trees resting at noon

From sweat and swink with scythe and dusty shoon.

SEPTEMBER

Ed. Earth’s flaunting flower of passion fadeth fair

To ripening fruit in sunlit veils of the air,

As the art of man makes wisdom to glorify

The beauty and love of life born else to die.

OCTOBER

Ba. On frosty morns with the woods aflame, down, down

The golden spoils fall thick from the chestnut crown.

May Autumn in tranquil glory her riches spend,

With mellow apples her orchard-branches bend.

NOVEMBER

Ed. Sad mists have hid the sun, the land is forlorn:

The plough is afield, the hunter windeth his horn.

Dame Prudence looketh well to her winter stores,

And many a wise man finds his pleasure indoors.

DECEMBER

Ba. I pray thee don thy jerkin of olden time,

Bring us good ice, and silver the trees with rime;

And I will good cheer, good music and wine bestow,

When the Christmas guest comes galloping over the snow.

Robert Bridges (1844–1930)

3 JANUARY

To a Snowflake

What heart could have thought you? –

Past our devisal

(O filigree petal!)

Fashioned so purely,

Fragilely, surely,

From what Paradisal

Imagineless metal,

Too costly for cost?

Who hammered you, wrought you,

From argentine vapor? –

‘God was my shaper.

Passing surmisal,

He hammered, He wrought me,

From curled silver vapor,

To lust of His mind –

Thou could’st not have thought me!

So purely, so palely,

Tinily, surely,

Mightily, frailly,

Insculped and embossed,

With His hammer of wind,

And His graver of frost.’

Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

4 JANUARY

Paradise Lost

BOOK VII, LINES 387–416

And God said, ‘Let the waters generate

Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul;

And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings

Displayed on the open firmament of heaven.’

And God created the great whales, and each

Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously

The waters generated by their kinds,

And every bird of wing after his kind,

And saw that it was good, and blessed them, saying,

‘Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas

And lakes and running streams the waters fill;

And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth.’

Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay,

With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals

Of fish with their fins and shining scales

Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft

Bank the mid-sea; part, single or with mate,

Graze the sea-weed, their pasture, and through groves

Of coral stray, or sporting with quick glance

Show to the sun their waved coats dropped with gold,

Or in their pearly shells at ease, attend

Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food

In jointed armour watch; on smooth the seal

And bended dolphins play: part, huge of bulk,

Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,

Tempest the ocean: there leviathan

Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

Stretched like a promontory slaps or swims,

And seems a moving land, and at his gills

Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.

John Milton (1608–1674)

5 JANUARY

The Seasons

FROM THE FAERIE QUEEN, MUTABILITYCLAIMS TO RULE THE WORLD, LINES 136–171

So, forth issew’d the Seasons of the yeare;

First, lusty Spring, all dight in leaues of flowres

That freshly budded and new bloosmes did beare

(In which a thousand birds had built their bowres

That sweetly sung, to call forth Paramours):

And in his hand a iauelin did beare,

And on his head (as fit for warlike stoures)

A guilt engrauen morion he did weare;

That as some did him loue, so others did him feare.

Then came the iolly Sommer, being dight

In a think silken cassock coloured greene,

That was vnlyned all, to be more light:

And on his head a girlond well beseene

He wore, from which as he had chauffed been

The sweat did drop; and in his hand he bore

A boawe and shaftes, as he in forrest greene

Had hunted late the Libbard or the Bore,

And now would bathe his limbs, with labor heated sore.

Then came the Autumne all in yellow clad,

As though he ioyed in his plenteous store,

Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad

That he had banisht hunger, which to-fore

Had by the belly oft him pinched sore.

Vpon his head a wreath that was enrold

With eares of corn, of euery sort he bore:

And in his hand a sickle he did holde,

To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold.

Lastly, came Winter cloathed all in frize,

Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill,

Whil’st on his hoary beard his breath did freese;

And the dull drops that from his purpled bill

As from a limbeck did adown distill.

In his right hand a tipped staffe he held,

With which his feeble steps he stayed still:

For, he was faint with cold, and weak with eld;

That scares his loosed limbes he hable was to weld.

Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599)

6 JANUARY

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

7 JANUARY

Woods in Winter

When winter winds are piercing chill,

And through the hawthorn blows the gale,

With solemn feet I tread the hill,

That overbrows the lonely vale.

O’er the bare upland, and away

Through the long reach of desert woods,

The embracing sunbeams chastely play

And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,

The summer vine in beauty clung,

And summer winds the stillness broke,

The crystal icicle is hung.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs

Pour out the river’s gradual tide,

Shrilly the skater’s iron rings,

And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,

When birds sang out their mellow lay,

And winds were soft, and woods were green,

And the song ceased not with the day!

But still wild music is abroad,

Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;

And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,

Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear

Has grown familiar with your song;

I hear it in the opening year,

I listen, and it cheers me long.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

8 JANUARY

January is the first month in the year

1

January is the first month in the year

When the weather is cold and clear:

Boys roll the snowball round and round

Or slide on the pond where the ice is sound.

2

February Fill-ditch then sets in

With a pelting rain that will wet you to the skin

Soon as the sky shews a speck of blue

How the pretty snowdrops gleam to view.

3

March comes on with wind from the East,

A wind good neither for man nor beast:

The daffodil flaunts it in yellow and green

What cares she if the wind be keen?

4

April’s showers and sunshine bright

Paint the rainbow to our sight:

Then the violet smelling sweet

Under every hedge we meet.

5

May hangs blossoms on the thorn –

Then the lamb and colt are born:

Primroses forsaken die

Gaudier flowers engage the eye.

6

June with tulips, eglantine

Will be finest of the fine:

Rose and lily odours yield

New-made hay scents many a field.

7

In July the sultry night

Scarce will cool the weary wight:

Then the woolly sheep are shorn

Then the harvest home is borne.

8

August brings the juicy grape

Melons too of goodly shape:

Then the melting peaches come

Nectarine apple pear and plum.

9

In September hares must die

Grouse and partridge swift and shy:

Then’s the time to hunt and shoot

Then’s the time to gather fruit.

10

In October drink good ale

Soon the year begins to fail:

Drink the ale so fine and mellow

Though the leaves are turning yellow.

11

Chill November’s surly blast

Tears the boughs and drives them fast:

Then the sleet mixed up with rain

Makes us of the wet complain.

12

Cold December’s frosty air

Makes us to the fire repair:

Then good friends each other meet

To enjoy a Christmas treat.

Sara Coleridge (1802–1852)

9 JANUARY

The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

One without looks in to-night

Through the curtain-chink

From the sheet of glistening white;

One without looks in to-night

As we sit and think

By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes

Watching in the snow;

Lit by lamps of rosy dyes

We do not discern those eyes

Wondering, aglow

Four-footed, tiptoe.

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

10 JANUARY

The Sky is low – the Clouds are mean

The Sky is low – the Clouds are mean.

A Travelling Flake of Snow

Across a Barn or through a Rut

Debates if it will go –

A Narrow Wind complains all Day

How some one treated him

Nature, like Us, is sometimes caught

Without her Diadem.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

11 JANUARY

On the Phoenix

Come, Phoenix, come, if such a bird there be,

Point me out the happy tree,

Whose boughs can boast they bear the nest

Wherein thou lov’st to rest:

O lead me to the envied place,

Which thou dost with thy presence grace.

Arabia boasts she is the spot of earth

Wherein thou first got birth.

Dost thou never change thy clime

In so vast a space of time?

What entertainment hast thou there,

That is not any other where?

Come westward, noble bird, and see

What homage we will pay to thee.

But hark! I hear Arabia’s sons reply:

‘We enjoy tranquillity

In a more enlarged extent

Than any other continent;

We possess a richer soil,

With less labour and less toil,

Than any men below,

And live at greater distance from a foe.

‘Our stately trees all kinds of spices bear,

Our fountains gratify the ear,

Each leaf in consort joins to please

With the soft whispers of the evening breeze.

Here doth Phoebus make his bed,

’Tis by him she’s hither led:

Why should not we the honour have

To her a residence to give?

‘To our blest land did Nature send the fire

In which her mother did expire:

Five hundred years she’s lived a chaste exile,

Then died upon the funeral pile;

Out of her fragrant ashes came

This exalted bird of fame;

To Phoebus’ burning rays she owes her life;

In his chaste arms her mother died, ere she was made a wife.’

Such fables oft are told of thee,

Yet I confess thou seems to me

A bird begot by Poetry.

Thousands have beheld thee on

The fabled mountain Helicon:

’Tis there thou loves to dwell.

Nay, I myself have seen thee there,

But never any other where,

Except at Pindar’s well.

Jean Adams (1710–1765)

12 JANUARY

England

We have no grass locked up in ice so fast

That cattle cut their faces and at last,

When it is reached, must lie them down and starve,

With bleeding mouths that freeze too hard to move.

We have not that delirious state of cold

That makes men warm and sing when in Death’s hold.

We have no roaring floods whose angry shocks

Can kill the fishes dashed against the rocks.

We have no winds that cut down street by street,

As easy as our scythes can cut down wheat.

No mountains here to spew their burning hearts

Into the valleys, on our human parts.

No earthquakes here, that ring church bells afar,

A hundred miles from where those earthquakes are.

We have no cause to set our dreaming eyes,

Like Arabs, on fresh streams in Paradise.

We have no wilds to harbour men that tell

More murders than they can remember well.

No woman here shall wake from her night’s rest,

To find a snake is sucking at her breast.

Though I have travelled many and many a mile,

And had a man to clean my boots and smile

With teeth that had less bone in them than gold –

Give me this England now for all my world.

W. H. Davies (1871–1940)

13 JANUARY

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly,

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate,

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

14 JANUARY

To a Snowdrop

Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they

But hardier far, once more I see thee bend

Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,

Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,

Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay

The rising sun, and on the plains descend;

Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend

Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May

Shall soon behold this border thickly set

With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing

On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;

Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,

Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,

And pensive monitor of the fleeting years!

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

15 JANUARY

January

FROM THE SHEPHERD’S CALENDAR

Again the robin waxes tame

And ventures pitys crumbs to claim

Picking the trifles off the snow

Which dames on purpose daily throw

And perching on the window sill

Where memory recollecting still

Knows the last winters broken pane

And there he hops and peeps again

The clouds of starnels dailey fly

Blackening thro the evening sky

To whittleseas reed wooded mere

And ozier holts by rivers near

And many a mingld swarthy crowd

Rook crow and jackdaw noising loud

Fly too and fro to dreary fen

Dull winters weary flight agen

Flopping on heavy wings away

As soon as morning wakens grey

And when the sun sets round and red

Returns to naked woods to bed

Wood pigeons too in flocks appear

By hunger tamd from timid fear

They mid the sheep unstartld steal

And share wi them a scanty meal

Picking the green leaves want bestows

Of turnips sprouting thro the snows.

John Clare (1793–1864)

16 JANUARY

The Keener Tempest

FROM WINTER, THE SEASONS

The keener tempests come: and fuming dun

From all the livid east, or piercing north,

Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb

A vapoury deluge lies, to snow congeal’d.

Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;

And the sky saddens with the gather’d storm.

Through the hush’d air the whitening shower descends,

At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes

Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day

With a continual flow. The cherish’d fields

Put on their winter robe of purest white.

James Thomson (1700–1748)

17 JANUARY

Weathers

I

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,

And so do I;

When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,

And nestlings fly:

And the little brown nightingale bills his best,

And they sit outside at ‘The Travellers’ Rest’,

And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,

And citizens dream of the south and west,

And so do I.

II

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,

And so do I;

When beeches drip in browns and duns,

And thresh, and ply;

And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,

And meadow rivulets overflow,

And drops on gate-bars hang in a row,

And rooks in families homeward go,

And so do I.

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

18 JANUARY

The Rainbow

Even the rainbow has a body

made of drizzling rain

and it is an architecture of glistening atoms

built up, built up

yet you can’t lay your hand on it,

nay, nor even your mind.

D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930)

19 JANUARY

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind

FROM AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT II, SCENE VII

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Hey-ho, sing hey-ho, unto the green holly.

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, hey-ho, the holly;

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Hey-ho, sing hey-ho, unto the green holly.

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, hey-ho, the holly;

This life is most jolly.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

20 JANUARY

Seasons

Oh the cheerful budding-time

When thorn-hedges turn to green;

When new leaves of elm and lime

Cleave and shed their winter screen:

Tender lambs are born and baa,

North wind finds no snow to bring,

Vigorous nature laughs Haha

In the miracle of spring.

Oh the gorgeous blossom-days

When broad flag-flowers drink and blow;

In and out in summer blaze

Dragonflies flash to and fro:

Ashen branches hang out keys,

Oaks put forth the rosy shoot,

Wandering herds wax sleek at ease,

Lovely blossoms end in fruit.

Oh the shouting harvest-weeks:

Mother Earth grown fat with sheaves;

Thrifty gleaner finds who seeks:

Russet golden pomp of leaves

Crowns the woods, to fall at length;

Bracing winds are felt to stir,

Ocean gathers up her strength,

Beasts renew their dwindled fur.

Oh the starving winter-lapse

Ice-bound, hunger-pinched and dim:

Dormant roots recal their saps,

Empty nests show black and grim,

Short-lived sunshine gives no heat,

Undue buds are nipped by frost,

Snow sets forth a windingsheet,

And all hope of life seems lost.

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)

21 JANUARY

Forsaken Woods

Forsaken woods, trees with sharpe storms opprest

whose leaves once hidd, the sun, now strew the grownd

once bred delight, now scorn, late usde to sownd

of sweetest birds, now of hoars crowes the nest

Gardens which once in thowsand coulers drest

shewed natures pryde: now in dead sticks abownd

in whome prowde summers treasure late was found

now but the rags, of winters torn coate rest

Medows whose sydes, late fayre brookes kist now slyme

embraced holds: feelds whose youth green and brave

promist long lyfe, now frosts lay in the grave

Say all and I with them: what doth not tyme!

but they whoe knew tyme, tyme will finde again

I that fayre tymes lost, on tyme call in vain.

Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester (1563–1626)

22 JANUARY

Out in the Dark

Out in the dark over the snow

The fallow fawns invisible go

With the fallow doe;

And the winds blow

Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round

And, when the lamp goes, without sound

At a swifter bound

Than the swiftest hound,

Arrives, and all else is drowned;

And star and I and wind and deer,

Are in the dark together, – near,

Yet far, – and fear

Drums on my ear

In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,

All the universe of sight,

Love and delight,

Before the might,

If you love it not, of night.

Edward Thomas (1878–1917)

23 JANUARY

Snow Storm

Winter is come in earnest and the snow

In dazzling splendour – crumping underfoot

Spreads a white world all calm and where we go

By hedge or wood trees shine from top to root

In feathered foliage flashing light and shade

Of strangest contrast – fancys pliant eye

Delighted sees a vast romance displayed

And fairy halls descended from the sky

The smallest twig its snowy burthen wears

And woods oer head the dullest eyes engage

To shape strange things – where arch and pillar bears

A roof of grains fantastic arched and high

And little shed beside the spinney wears

The grotesque zemblance of an hermitage

One almost sees the hermit from the wood

Come bending with his sticks beneath his arm

And then the smoke curl up its dusky flood

From the little white roof his peace to warm

One shapes his books his quiet and his joys

And in romances world forgetting mood

The scene so strange so fancys mind employs

It seems heart aching for his solitude

Domestic spots near home and trod so oft

Seen daily – known for years – by the strange wand

Of winters humour changed – the little croft

Left green at night when morns loth look obtrudes

Tree bushes grass to one wild garb subdued

Are gone and left us in another land.

John Clare (1793–1864)

24 JANUARY

On Wenlock Edge

A SHROPSHIRE LAD, XXXI

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;

His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger

When Uricon the city stood:

’Tis the old wind in the old anger,

But then it threshed another wood.

Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman

At yonder heaving hill would stare:

The blood that warms an English yeoman,

The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,

Through him the gale of life blew high;

The tree of man was never quiet:

Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:

To-day the Roman and his trouble

Are ashes under Uricon.

A. E. Housman (1859–1936)

25 JANUARY

Farewell to the Highlands

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart’s in the Highlands a chasing the deer;

A chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,

My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the north,

The birth place of Valour, the country of Worth,

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high cover’d with snow;

Farewell to the straths and green vallies below:

Farewell to the forests and wild hanging woods;

Farewell to the torrents and loud pouring floods.

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart’s in the Highlands a chasing the deer:

Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,

My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

26 JANUARY

The Snow-drop

VERSE 1

Fear no more, thou timid Flower!

Fear thou no more the winter’s might,

The whelming thaw, the ponderous shower,

The silence of the freezing night!

Since Laura murmur’d o’er thy leaves

The potent sorceries of song,

To thee, meek Flowret! gentler gales

And cloudless skies belong.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

27 JANUARY

Triad I

I

The word of the sun to the sky,

The word of the wind to the sea,

The word of the moon to the night,

What may it be?

II

The sense to the flower of the fly,

The sense of the bird to the tree,

The sense to the cloud of the light,

Who can tell me?

III

The song of the fields to the kye,

The song of the lime to the bee,

The song of the depths to the height,

Who knows all three?

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

28 JANUARY

Ode to the Snow-drop

The Snow-drop, Winter’s timid child,

Awakes to life, bedew’d with tears,

And flings around its fragrance mild;

And where no rival flow’rets bloom,

Amid the bare and chilling gloom,

A beauteous gem appears!

All weak and wan, with head inclin’d,

Its parent-breast the drifted snow,

It trembles, while the ruthless wind

Bends its slim form; the tempest lowers,

Its em’rald eye drops crystal show’rs

On its cold bed below.

Poor flow’r! on thee the sunny beam

No touch of genial warmth bestows!

Except to thaw the icy stream

Whose little current purls along,

Thy fair and glossy charms among,

And whelms thee as it flows.

The night-breeze tears thy silky dress,

Which deck’d, with silv’ry lustre shone;

The morn returns, not thee to bless,

The gaudy Crocus flaunts its pride,

And triumphs where its rival – died,

Unshelter’d and unknown!

No sunny beam shall gild thy grave,

No bird of pity thee deplore;

There shall noverdant branches wave;

For spring shall all her gems unfold,

And revel ’midst her beds of gold,

When thou art seen no more!

Where’er I find thee, gentle flow’r,

Thou still art sweet, and dear to me!

For I have known the cheerless hour,

Have seen the sun-beams cold and pale,

Have felt the chilling, wint’ry gale,

And wept, and shrunk like thee!

Mary Robinson (1758–1800)

29 JANUARY

Winter Heavens

Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive

Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.

It is a night to make the heavens our home

More than the nest whereto apace we strive.

Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,

Its swarms outrushing from the golden comb.

They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:

The living throb in me, the dead revive.

Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,

Life glistens on the river of the death.

It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt.

Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs

Of radiance, the radiance enrings:

And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.

George Meredith (1828–1909)

30 JANUARY

Birds at Winter Nightfall

(TRIOLET)

Around the house the flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone

From holly and cotoneaster

Around the house. The flakes fly! – faster

Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster

We used to see upon the lawn

Around the house. The flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone!

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

31 JANUARY

A Year’s Windfalls

On the wind of January

Down flits the snow,

Travelling from the frozen North

As cold as it can blow.

Poor robin redbreast,

Look where he comes;

Let him in to feel your fire,

And toss him of your crumbs.

On the wind in February

Snowflakes float still,