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

Jane McMorland Hunter

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

Seitenzahl: 270

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

A calming collection of nature poems to help you relax and unwind at the end of every day. Now more than ever we're all in need of a daily fix of the natural world, to comfort and distract us from the cares of everyday life. Keep this beautiful book by your bedside and enjoy a dreamy stroll through nature every evening, just before you go to sleep. All the great, time-honoured poets are here – William Wordsworth, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Robert Bridges – along with some newer and less-well known poetic voices. The poems reflect and celebrate the changing seasons: read Emily Brontë on bluebells in spring and Edward Thomas's evocative 'Adlestrop' in summer, then experience golden autumn with Hartley Coleridge and William Blake's 'To Winter'. Beautifully illustrated with scenes from each season, this wonderful book deserves a place on your bedside table for years to come.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

JANUARY

The Stars were Sparkling Clear

FEBRUARY

Wild Skies and Flurrying Snows

MARCH

Green Leaves and Blossoms

APRIL

The Nightingale Begins its Song

MAY

The Moon Shines White and Silent

JUNE

Balmy-sweet Summer Twilight

JULY

Each Daisy Stands Like a Star

AUGUST

Now Fades the Glimmering Landscape

SEPTEMBER

Colder Airs Creeping from the Misty Moon

OCTOBER

The Western Sun Withdraws

NOVEMBER

Withered Sward and Wintry Sky

DECEMBER

A Silence Deep and White

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

INDEX OF POETS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Matilda, who came home. And to Mat and Sarah, who helped. With all my love.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Jane McMorland Hunter has compiled seven anthologies of poetry for Batsford and the National Trust. She also writes gardening and cookery books and works as a gardener and at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly. She lives in London with a small, grey tabby cat.

Introduction

It may seem obvious, but everything looks different at night. Shadows take on a deeper hue and colours appear indistinct. Shapes that are harmless in daylight are transformed in the dark of night, becoming menacing or beguiling. This is the realm of the nightingale and the owl, the moon and the stars. I have deliberately avoided the darkest poems but, in more ways than the obvious, the night is darker than the day. Our fears come to the surface and we cannot see what may be lurking beyond the patches of light in the deep shadows. Here you will find some poems of uncertainty, loss, disquiet and enchantment. Midnight, for many poets, is a crucial turning point, more than simply a change of date: ‘’Tis the hour of endings, ended, / Of beginnings, unbegun.’ (Laurence Binyon). With this in mind, some poems in this collection look forward to the dawn whilst others look back to nature in the daylight hours.

Strictly speaking, nature is associated with the wild – the physical world untouched by man. My definition also includes the more domesticated pets and gardens, as well as mythical creatures and enchanted ones. Nature poems are inevitably closely linked with all aspects of human life: the sight of lambs gambolling in the sunshine has the power to lift our spirits, just as the eerie hoot of an owl on a cold winter’s night can strike fear in any heart. Early poets ascribed the movement of the seasons and the natural world to God, gods or magical powers and, whilst we now know most things can be explained by science, there is still an unworldly beauty surrounding a host of golden daffodils or a crimson sunset.

Many poems that are not primarily about nature still often briefly paint pictures of the natural world. I have deliberately cut poems to include some of these fleeting glimpses, even if it involves obscuring the true meaning of the poem. Details of the complete poem are given as I hope the reader will be seduced by the extract and seek out the entire work. The opening lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’ are a case in point, as are six lines I have taken from William Wordsworth’s ‘The Two-Part Prelude’. I have also included poems of friendship, love and loss set within a theme of nature. Robert Browning’s ‘Meeting’ and ‘Night’ and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ‘The Tide Rises’, the Tide Falls each tell the story of a journey but their setting earns them both a place in this collection.

My seasons deliberately follow an idealistic cycle. In this imagined world flowers, animals and birds are occasionally caught out by untimely frosts and winds but, on the whole, the seasons arrive and depart as they should. Snow appears punctually in December, falls magically on Christmas Eve and never turns to slush. Thrushes herald the arrival of spring and summer rains fall with perfect timing, providing gentle relief rather than devastating floods. We know where we are, as Amy Lowell says ‘For to-morrow Winter drops into the waste-basket, / And the calendar calls it March.’

These poems do not necessarily reflect a realistic view of the world and its climate today but the works of John Clare, George MacDonald, Rachel Field and Emily Dickinson create visions that we can all appreciate and learn from. These poems were not collected to form a manifesto but they all remind us that we must look after nature. Many were written on things that are already lost to us, woe that, through our actions or inactions, we should lose even more. There are no polar ice caps in these verses but birdsong, the sight of stars, fields of wild flowers and dappled woodlands are all endangered. This anthology gives a poem to read for every night of the year, I hope that at least some of them will remind us of the fragility and beauty of Earth.

Good-night; ensured release,

Imperishable peace,

Have these for yours,

While sea abides, and land,

And earth’s foundations stand,

And heaven endures.

(From ‘Parta Quies’ by A. E. Housman)

1 JANUARY

Tapestry Trees

Oak.

I am the Roof-tree and the Keel;

I bridge the seas for woe and weal.

Fir.

High o’er the lordly oak I stand,

And drive him on from land to land.

Ash.

I heft my brother’s iron bane;

I shaft the spear, and build the wain.

Yew.

Dark down the windy dale I grow,

The father of the fateful Bow.

Poplar.

The war-shaft and the milking-bowl

I make, and keep the hay-wain whole.

Olive.

The King I bless; the lamps I trim;

In my warm wave do fishes swim.

Apple-tree.

I bowed my head to Adam’s will;

The cups of toiling men I fill.

Vine.

I draw the blood from out the earth;

I store the sun for winter mirth.

Orange-tree.

Amidst the greenness of my night,

My odorous lamps hang round and bright.

Fig-tree.

I who am little among trees

In honey-making mate the bees.

Mulberry-tree.

Love’s lack hath dyed my berries red:

For Love’ attire my leaves are shed.

Pear-tree.

High o’er the mead-flowers’ hidden feet

I bear aloft my burden sweet.

Bay.

Look on my leafy boughs, the Crown

Of living song and dead renown!

William Morris (1834–1896)

2 JANUARY

The Months

January brings the snow,

Makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,

Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,

Stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,

Scatters daises at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,

Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,

Fills the children’s hand with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,

Apricots and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,

Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit,

Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant,

Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast,

Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,

Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

Sara Coleridge (1802–1852)

3 JANUARY

Sonnet: The Human Seasons

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness – to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

John Keats (1795–1821)

4 JANUARY

A Dream of Summer

VERSES 1–3

Bland as the morning breath of June

The southwest breezes play;

And, through its haze, the winter noon

Seems warm as summer’s day.

The snow-plumed Angel of the North

Has dropped his icy spear;

Again the mossy earth looks forth,

Again the streams gush clear.

The fox his hillside cell forsakes,

The muskrat leaves his nook,

The bluebird in the meadow brakes

Is singing with the brook.

‘Bear up, O Mother Nature!’ cry

Bird, breeze, and streamlet free;

‘Our winter voices prophesy

Of summer days to thee!’

So, in those winters of the soul,

By bitter blasts and drear

O’erswept from Memory’s frozen pole,

Will sunny days appear.

Reviving Hope and Faith, they show

The soul its living powers,

And how beneath the winter’s snow

Lie germs of summer flowers!

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)

5 JANUARY

Sonnet 60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,

Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

6 JANUARY

Not So Far as the Forest

VERSE 1

I

That chill is in the air

Which the wise know well, and even have learned to bear.

This joy, I know,

Will soon be under snow.

The sun sets in a cloud

And is not seen.

Beauty, that spoke aloud,

Addresses now only the remembering ear.

The heart begins here

To feed on what has been.

Night falls fast.

Today is in the past.

Blown from the dark hill hither to my door

Three flakes, then four

Arrive, then many more.

Edna St Vincent Millay (1892–1950)

7 JANUARY

The Night of the Dance

The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn

And centres its gaze on me;

The stars, like eyes in reverie,

Their westering as for a while forborne,

Quiz downward curiously.

Old Robert draws the backbrand in,

The green logs steam and spit;

The half-awakened sparrows flit

From the riddled thatch; and owls begin

To whoo from the gable-slit.

Yes; far and nigh things seem to know

Sweet scenes are impending here;

That all is prepared; that the hour is near

For welcomes, fellowships, and flow

Of sally, song, and cheer;

That spigots are pulled and viols strung;

That soon will arise the sound

Of measures trod to tunes renowned;

That She will return in Love’s low tongue

My vows as we wheel around.

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

8 JANUARY

The Lake

On a calm day

The lake

Imagines it is a mirror

And smiles back

At people who pass by

Smiling.

On a breezy day

The lake

Hunches its shoulders

And sends ripples

Scudding across the surface.

On a winter’s day

The lake

Hides itself

Under a frozen blanket

And refuses to budge

Until it is warm enough

To come out again.

John Foster (1941– )

9 JANUARY

Impressions I

LES SILHOUETTES

The sea is flecked with bars of grey

The dull dead wind is out of tune,

And like a withered leaf the moon

Is blown across the stormy bay.

Etched clear upon the pallid sand

The black boat lies: a sailor boy

Clambers aboard in careless joy

With laughing face and gleaming hand.

And overheard the curlews cry,

Where through the dusky upland grass

The young brown-throated reapers pass,

Like silhouettes against the sky.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

10 JANUARY

Trees

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918)

11 JANUARY

Sonnet IV: To the Moon

Queen of the silver bow! - by thy pale beam,

Alone and pensive, I delight to stray,

And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream,

Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way.

And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light

Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast;

And oft I think – fair planet of the night,

That in thy orb, the wretched may have rest:

The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go,

Released by death – to thy benignant sphere,

And the sad children of despair and woe

Forget in thee, their cup of sorrow here.

Oh! that I soon may reach thy world serene,

Poor wearied pilgrim – in this toiling scene!

Charlotte Smith (1749–1806)

12 JANUARY

The King of the Wood

Winter: winter in the woods

Is the bone that was the beauty,

The bough that lives the leaf:

The food supplies sink low

And the hedgehog and badger know the hour is late.

Comes snow – the scouting flakes

Nipping out of the north

Followed by bulky brigades

Falling with formidable lust

On land where evil and warm the weevil sleeps.

Spring: the leaves of the chestnut

Hang in the branches like bats;

Bluebells flood into valleys

Where butterflies dry wet wings

And the cock bird lords it in song on his terrain.

This is the season of primrose,

Woodruff, and anemone –

And the season of caterpillars

Of the mottled umber moth

Fattening ambition in a thousand worlds of plenty.

Summer: welcome the woods

When the air sweats in the sun!

Here is a draught of shade

In a cellar deep and dark

Where barrels are so tall they sway like trees.

Now ants are on the hunt

Each for a swag of syrup –

And the felted beech coccus

Seeks out the straight young tree

To lay the foundation stone of a leaning tower.

Autumn: the sky more blue

Than any flower or crystal:

The yellow and wrinkled face

Of the wood is streaked with wounds

As the catkins of the birches slide to the soil.

Burgled boxes with ermine

Lining drop their conkers

Among loot of acorns for squirrels –

And into the earth descends

The cockchafer beetle’s larva to mine a future.

Clifford Dyment (1914–1971)

13 JANUARY

To Winter

‘O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:

The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark

Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs

Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.’

He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep

Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathèd

In ribbèd steel; I dare not lift mine eyes;

For he hath rear’d his sceptre o’er the world.

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings

To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:

He withers all in silence, and in his hand

Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs, - the mariner

Cries in vain. Poor little wretch, that deal’st

With storms! – till heaven smiles, and the monster

Is driv’n yelling to his caves beneath mount Hecla.

William Blake (1757–1827)

14 JANUARY

At Carbis Bay

FROM INTERMEZZO: PASTORAL

Out of the night of the sea,

Out of the turbulent night,

A sharp and hurrying wind

Scourges the waters white:

The terror by night.

Out of the doubtful dark,

Out of the night of the land,

What is it breathes and broods

Hoveringly at hand?

The menace of land.

Out of the night of heaven,

Out of the delicate sky,

Pale and serene the stars

In their silence reply:

The peace of the sky.

Arthur Symons (1865–1945)

15 JANUARY

Snowdrop

Now is the globe shrunk tight

Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart.

Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,

Move through an outer darkness

Not in their right minds,

With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends,

Brutal as the stars of this month,

Her pale head heavy as metal.

Ted Hughes (1930–1998)

16 JANUARY

There’s a Certain Slant of Light

There’s a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons –

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –

We can find no scar,

But internal difference –

Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –

’Tis the Seal Despair –

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –

Shadows – hold their breath –

When it goes, ’tis like the Distance

On the look of Death –

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

17 JANUARY

Evening by the Sea

VERSES 1–3

It was between the night and day,

The trees looked very weary – one by one

Against the west they seemed to sway,

And yet were steady. The sad sun

In a sick doubt of colour lay

Across the water’s belt of dun.

On the weak wind scarce flakes of foam

There floated, hardly bourne at all

From the rent edge of water – some

Between slack gusts the wind let fall,

The white brine could not overcome

That pale grass on the southern wall.

That evening one could always hear

The sharp hiss of the shingle, rent

As each wave settled heavier,

The same rough way. This noise was blent

With many sounds that hurt the air

As the salt sea-wind came and went.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

18 JANUARY

Winter with the Gulf Stream

The boughs, the boughs are bare enough

But earth has never felt the snow.

Frost-furred our ivies are and rough

With bills of rime the brambles shew.

The hoarse leaves crawl on hissing ground

Because the sighing wind is low.

But if the rain-blasts be unbound

And from dank feathers wring the drops

The clogged brook runs with choking sound

Kneading the mounded mire that stops

His channel under clammy coats

Of foliage fallen in the copse.

A simple passage of weak notes

Is all the winter bird dare try.

The bugle moon by daylight floats

So glassy white about the sky,

So like a berg of hyaline,

And pencilled blue so daintily,

I never saw her so divine.

But through black branches, rarely drest

In scarves of silky shot and shine,

The webbed and the watery west

Where yonder crimson fireball sits

Looks laid for feasting and for rest.

I see long reefs of violets

In beryl-covered fens so dim,

A gold-water Pactolus frets

Its brindled wharves and yellow brim,

The waxen colours weep and run,

And slendering to his burning rim

Into the flat blue mist the sun

Drops out and all our day is done.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

19 JANUARY

The Two-Part Prelude

LINES 164–169

The leafless trees and every icy crag

Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed; while the stars,

Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west

The orange sky of evening died away.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

20 JANUARY

Winter Morning

All is so still;

The hill a picture of a hill

With silver kine that glimmer

Now whiter and now dimmer

Through the fog’s monochrome,

Painted by Cotman or Old Crome.

Pale in the sky

The winter sun shows a round eye,

That darkens and still brightens;

And all the landscape lightens

Till on the melting meadows

The trees are seen with hard white shadows.

Though in the balk

Ice doubles every lump of chalk

And the frost creeps across

The matted leaves in silver moss,

Here where the grass is dank

The sun weeps on this brightening bank.

Andrew Young (1885–1971)

21 JANUARY

January Dusk

Austere and clad in sombre robes of grey,

With hands upfolded and with silent wings,

In unimpassioned mystery the day

Passes; a lonely thrush its requiem sings.

The dust of night is tangled in the boughs

Of leafless lime and lilac, and the pine

Grows blacker, and the star upon the brows

Of sleep is set in heaven for a sign.

Earth’s little weary peoples fall on peace

And dream of breaking buds and blossoming,

Of primrose airs, of days of large increase,

And all the coloured retinue of spring.

John Drinkwater (1882–1937)

22 JANUARY

St Vincent’s Day

Remember on St Vincent’s Day,

If that the sun his beams display,

Be sure to mark his transient beam,

Which through the casement sheds a gleam;

For ’tis a token bright and clear

Of prosperous weather all the year.

Anon

23 JANUARY

A Frosty Day

Grass afield wears silver thatch;

Palings all are edged with rime;

Frost-flowers pattern round the latch;

Cloud nor breeze dissolve the clime;

When the waves are solid floor,

And the clods are iron-bound,

And the boughs are crystall’d hoar,

And the red leaf nailed a-ground.

When the fieldfare’s flight is slow,

And a rosy vapour rim,

Now the sun is small and low,

Belts along the region dim.

When the ice-crack flies and flaws,

Shore to shore, with thunder shock,

Deeper than the evening daws,

Clearer than the village clock.

When the rusty blackbird strips,

Bunch by bunch, the coral thorn;

And the pale day-crescent dips,

Now to heaven, a slender horn.

Lord de Tabley (1835–1895)

24 JANUARY

Winter Trees

See the bare arms of the trees!

Ah, it is good that it is winter,

and all the fuss and struggle of leaves is over,

and we may step into the anonymity of winter.

It is good that it is winter,

and the trees are stripped of all the nonsense of leaves,

as one who has shed the pretentions of clothes

is bare unto the soul.

David Austin (1926–2018)

25 JANUARY

Sheep in Winter

The sheep get up and make their many tracks

And bear a load of snow upon their backs

And gnaw the frozen turnip to the ground

With sharp quick bite and then go noising round

The boy that pecks the turnips all the day

And knocks his hands to keep the cold away

And laps his legs in straw to keep them warm

And hides behind the hedges from the storm

The sheep as tame as dogs go where he goes

And try to shake their fleeces from the snows

Then leave their frozen meal and wander round

The stubble stack that stands beside the ground

And lye all night and face the drizzling storm

And shun the hovel where they might be warm

John Clare (1793–1864)

26 JANUARY

January

FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE

From this dull rainy undersky and low,

This murky ending of a leaden day,

That never knew the sun, this half-thawed snow,

These tossing black boughs faint against the grey

Of gathering night, thou turnest, dear, away

Silent, but with thy scarce-seen kindly smile

Sent through the dusk my longing to beguile.

There, the lights gleam, and all is dark without!

And in the sudden change our eyes meet dazed –

O look, love, look again! the veil of doubt

Just for one flash, past counting, then was raised!

O eyes of heaven, as clear thy sweet soul blazed

On mine a moment! O come back again

Strange rest and dear amid the long dull pain!

Nay, nay, gone by! though there she sitteth still,

With wide grey eyes so frank and fathomless –

Be patient, heart, thy days they yet shall fill

With utter rest – Yea, now thy pain they bless,

And feed thy last hope of the world’s redress –

O unseen hurrying rack! O wailing wind!

What rest and where go ye this night to find?

William Morris (1834–1896)

27 JANUARY

Wind at Midnight

Naked night; black elms, pallid and streaming sky!

Alone with the passion of the Wind,

In a hollow of stormy sound lost and alone am I,

On beaten earth a lost, unmated mind,

Marvelling at the stars, few, strange, and bright,

That all this dark assault of surging air,

Wrenching the rooted wood, hunting the cloud of night,

As if it would tear all and nothing spare,

Leaves supreme in the height.

Against what laws, what laws, what powers invisible,

Unsought yet always found,

Cries this dumb passion, strains this wrestle of wild will,

With tiger-leaps that seem to shake the ground?

Is it the baffled, homeless, rebel wind’s crying

Or storm from a profounder passion wrung?

Ah, heart of man, is it you, the old powers defying,

By far desires and terrible beauty stung,

Broken on laws unseen, in a starry world dying

Ignorant, tameless, young?

Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)

28 JANUARY

Seasons and Times

VERSES 1–5

Awhile in the dead of the winter,

The wind hurries keen through the sunshine,

But finds no more leaves that may linger

On tree-boughs to strew on the ground.

Long streaks of bright snow-drift, bank-shaded,

Yet lie on the slopes, under hedges;

But still all the road out to Thorndon

Would not wet a shoe on the ground.

The days, though the cold seems to strengthen,

Outlengthen their span, and the evening

Seeks later and later its westing,

To cast its dim hue on the ground,

Till tree-heads shall thicken their shadow

With leaves of a glittering greenness,

And daisies shall fold up their blossoms

At evening, in dew on the ground;

And then, in the plum-warding garden,

Or shadowy orchard, the house-man

Shall smile at his fruit, really blushing,

Where sunheat shoots through on the ground.

William Barnes (1801–1886)

29 JANUARY

Snowdrop

A pale and pining girl, head bowed, heart gnawed,

whose figure nods and shivers in a shawl

of fine white wool, has suddenly appeared

in the damp woods, as mild and mute as snowfall.

She may not last. She has no strength at all,

but stoops and shakes as if she’d stood all night

on one bare foot, confiding with the moonlight.

One among several hundred clear-eyed ghosts

who get up in the cold and blink and turn

into those trembling emblems of night frosts,

she brings her burnt heart with her in an urn

of ashes, which she opens to re-mourn,

having no other outlet to express

her wild-flower sense of wounded gentleness.

Yes, she’s no more now than a drop of snow

on a green stem – her name is now her calling.

Her mind is just a frozen melting glow

of water swollen to the point of falling

which maybe has no meaning. There’s no telling.

But what’s a beauty, what a mighty power

of patience kept intact is now in flower.

Alice Oswald (1966– )

30 JANUARY

The Oak

VERSES 1 AND 2

What gnarlèd stretch, what depth of shade, is his!

There needs no crown to mark the forest’s king;

How in his leaves outshines full summer’s bliss!

Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring,

Which he with such benignant royalty

Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent;

All nature seems his vassal proud to be,

And cunning only for his ornament.

How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows,

An unquelled exile from the summer’s throne,

Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows,

Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown.

His boughs make music of the winter air,

Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front

Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair

The dints and furrows of time’s envious brunt.

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

31 JANUARY

The Song of the Beasts

(SUNG, ON ONE NIGHT, IN THE CITIES, IN THE DARKNESS)

Come away! Come away!

Ye are sober and dull through the common day,

But now it is night!

It is shameful night, and God is asleep!

(Have you not felt the quick fires that creep

Through the hungry flesh, and the lust of delight,

And hot secrets of dreams that day cannot say?) ...

The house is dumb;

The night calls out to you. – Come, ah, come!

Down the dim stairs, through the creaking door,

Naked, crawling on hands and feet

– It is meet! it is meet!

Ye are men no longer, but less and more,

Beast and God ... Down the lampless street,

By little black ways, and secret places,

In the darkness and mire,

Faint laughter around, and evil faces

By the star-glint seen – ah! follow with us!

For the darkness whispers a blind desire,

And the fingers of night are amorous ...

Keep close as we speed,

Though mad whispers woo you, and hot hands cling,

And the touch and the smell of bare flesh sting,

Soft flank by your flank, and side brushing side –

Tonight never heed!

Unswerving and silent follow with me,

Till the city ends sheer,

And the crook’d lanes open wide,

Out of the voices of night,

Beyond lust and fear,

To the level waters of moonlight,

To the level waters, quiet and clear,

To the black unresting plains of the calling sea.

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)

1 FEBRUARY

Midnight

There are sea and sky about me,

And yet nothing sense can mark;

For a mist fills all the midnight

Adding blindness to the dark.

There is not the faintest echo

From the life of yesterday:

Not the vaguest stir foretelling

Of a morrow on the way.

’Tis negation’s hour of triumph

In the absence of the sun;

’Tis the hour of endings, ended,

Of beginnings, unbegun.

Yet the voice of awful silence

Bids my waiting spirit hark;

There is action in the stillness,

There is progress in the dark.

In the drift of things and forces

Comes the better from the worse;

Swings the whole of Nature upward,

Wakes, and thinks – a universe.

There will be more life tomorrow,

And of life, more life that knows;

Though the sum of force be constant

Yet the Living ever grows.

So we sing of evolution,

And step strongly on our ways;

And we live through nights in patience

And we learn the worth of days.

Louisa Bevington (1845–1895)

2 FEBRUARY

The Thrush in February

VERSES 1–5

I know him, February’s thrush,

And loud at eve he valentines

On sprays that paw the naked bush

Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

Now ere the foreign singer thrills

Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours,

A herald of the million bills;

And heed him not, the loss is yours.

My study, flanked with ivied fir

And budded beech with dry leaves curled,

Perched over yew and juniper,

He neighbours, piping to his world: –

The wooded pathways dank on brown,

The branches on grey cloud a web,

The long green roller of the down,

An image of the deluge-ebb: –

And farther, they may hear along

The stream beneath the poplar row.

By fits, like welling rocks, the song

Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.

George Meredith (1828–1909)

3 FEBRUARY

Moon of Half-candied Meres

PRAELUDIUM, II

Moon of half-candied meres

And flurrying, fading snows;

Moon of unkindly rains,

Wild skies, and troubled vanes;

When the Norther snarls and bites,

And the lone moon walks a-cold,

And the lawns grizzle o’ nights,

And wet fogs search the fold:

Here in this heart of mine

A dream that warms like wine,

A dream one other knows,

Moon of the roaring weirs

And the sip-sopping close,

February Fill-Dyke,

Shapes like a royal rose –

A red, red rose!

O, but the distance clears!

O, but the daylight grows!

Soon shall the pied wind-flowers

Babble of greening hours,

Primrose and daffodil

Yearn to a fathering sun,

The lark have all his will,

The thrush be never done,

And April, May, and June

Go to the same blythe tune

As this blythe dream of mine!

Moon when the crocus peers,

Moon when the violet blows,

February Fair-Maid,

Haste, and let come the rose –

Let come the rose!

W. E. Henley (1849–1903)

4 FEBRUARY

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

The tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveller hastens toward the town,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Efface the footprints in the sands,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls