Friends: A Poem for Every Day of the Year E-Book

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

Seitenzahl: 282

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

365 poems celebrating friendship, love and constancy. This wonderful collection of poems celebrates friendship every day of the year. There are poems on the joys of companionship, encouragement, consolation, humour and love, making this a perfect gift for friends, family and partners. Poems featured include Emily Bronte's 'Love and Friendship' and Stevie Smith's 'Pleasures of friendship', as well as writings from Keats, Norman MacCaig, Waldo Emerson and Amy Lowell. Some of the most beautiful poems ever written are collected here to give us insight into the important things in life.

Leseprobe

FRIENDS: A POEM FOREVERY DAY OF THE YEAR

FRIENDS:A POEM FOREVERY DAYOF THE YEAR

EDITED BYJane McMorland Hunter

CONTENTS

JANUARY

It is a Sweet Thing, Friendship

FEBRUARY

Let Us Hold Hands

MARCH

The Breath of Kindness

APRIL

The Spring is for Joy

MAY

Please Come Flying

JUNE

An Accord in All Things

JULY

Memories that Endure

AUGUST

With Cheerful Greeting

SEPTEMBER

Such Sweet Company

OCTOBER

In Sunshine and in Shade

NOVEMBER

A Little Laughter

DECEMBER

Winter is Deck’d with a Smile

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

INDEX OF POETS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Louy and Matilda, with all my love.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Jane McMorland Hunter has compiled six anthologies: Favourite Poems of London, Favourite Poems of England, Classic Readings and Poems and A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year 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 as the Shop Scribe at Hatchards Bookshop in Piccadilly, compiling their annual catalogues.

Introduction

There are many different types of friends: old and new, those you see every day, others you might never see but whose contact is still important, and, ideally, lovers and married couples. This collection of poems is aimed at all of these people and more: children, students, families and people nearing the end of their lives who may have more ghostly friends than living ones. There are poems about friendship, poems you would give to a friend and one or two pieces of particularly poetic prose.

Throughout our lives we make, keep and, regrettably, lose friends. Old friends, as praised by Austin Dobson, may be the best, but there was a moment when they were new friends; first meetings, first friends and first loves are all important. At any stage of life, what is clear is that friends make most things better: William Wordsworth’s description of skating, G. K. Chesterton’s drunken outing and Robert Louis Stevenson’s piratical adventures are all better because they are enjoyed in company. Even food tastes better with friends, as Ben Jonson’s planning and Robert Herrick’s lonely meal attest.

Our first friends are often our siblings, followed by school playmates and fellow scholars. It is at this point that love and friendship start to intertwine. Emily Brontë is clear on the difference between the two, describing one as an ephemeral wild briar rose and the other as an everlasting holly tree. Laura, in Thomas Moore’s ‘Temple to Friendship’, confuses friendship and love when choosing a statue for her garden; how much more confusing are matters which involve real people. Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Shakespeare and others describe feelings of love, but many of these could equally apply to our friends – do most of us not love our closest friends?

Marriage is, again ideally, a union of two friends. From Thomas Campion and Anne Bradstreet to William Barnes and Charles Jefferys, poets have extolled the virtues of friendship in marriage. Laurence Alma-Tadema points out that even if you fail to marry, a squirrel, a rabbit, a pony and a lamb will provide the companionship you need.

Animals are often our best friends, although some are more reliable than others; Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Flush is well known for his faithfulness but Tiger, Binkie and an unnamed watchdog also prove their worth at the hands of Jonathan Swift, Rudyard Kipling and Lord Byron. Cats have a more varied reputation, with Christopher Smart and others recognising that a cat’s friendship is never quite as unquestioning as that of a dog. For other poets a falcon, a lamb, a tree and a hare are less likely soulmates (Thomas Wyatt, Sarah Josepha Hale, Christina Rossetti and William Cowper respectively).

Friendship between animals also exists, with the surprising pairing of a duck and a kangaroo courtesy of Edward Lear, and the charming faithfulness of a goldfinch who, in the mind of William Cowper, chooses to forsake freedom rather than desert his friend in their cage.

Memories of friends can be as important as friendship itself. Fleeting glimpses of happiness appear in Louis MacNeice’s ‘Sunlight on the Garden’, and in Leigh Hunt’s ‘Rondeau’ the memory of a single kiss outweighs all the trials and tribulations of old age. In some cases the memories can make the dead seem more alive than the living. Many poets write of lost friends and loves, either through death or misfortune. Whatever the cause, as Lord Tennyson writes, ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’.

As well as descriptions of friendships, this anthology also contains poems which one could give to a friend: Edward Thomas’ ‘Thaw’, which sees the passing of winter, and John Drinkwater’s ‘Miracle’, which welcomes spring. The pleasure of a walk in the countryside and the time to ‘stand and stare’ are things any friends would wish to share. W. B. Yeats gives us the perfect Christmas gesture of friendship, to spread one’s dreams at another’s feet.

Although this is an anthology of poetry, in each month there is a little prose. Essays by Francis Bacon, William Emerson and others were too moving to ignore. There are diaries, plays, passages from the Bible, and an extract from Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers which describe friendship in a poetical way even if they are not strictly poetry.

In many anthologies the order of the poems is governed by external factors: nature by the passing seasons, life by the passage of time itself. Here, apart from Valentine’s, the famously exuberant spring and a few dates with personal connections, there was no such guide. It was impossible to place the poems so that they could be all things to all readers; my hope is that all will find some poems that pertain particularly to them whilst still being able to enjoy the others.

One of the most perceptive poems in this collection is by Edward Verrall Lucas, who rightly points out that often we cannot explain our choice of friends:

‘We two are friends’ tells everything.

Yet if you must know, this is why:

Because he is he and I am I.

Edward Verrall Lucas

JANUARY

It is a Sweet Thing, Friendship

1 JANUARY

Passages of the Poem,or Connected Therewith

LINES 62–77

It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,

A happy and auspicious bird of calm,

Which rides o’er life’s ever tumultuous Ocean;

A God that broods o’er chaos in commotion;

A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are,

Lifts its bold head into the world’s frore air,

And blooms most radiantly when others die,

Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity;

And with the light and odour of its bloom,

Shining within the dungeon and the tomb;

Whose coming is as light and music are

‘Mid dissonance and gloom – a star

Which moves not ’mid the moving heavens alone –

A smile among dark frowns – a gentle tone

Among rude voices, a belovèd light,

A solitude, a refuge, a delight.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

2 JANUARY

Since We Parted

Since we parted yester eve,

I do love thee, love, believe,

Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer, –

One dream deeper, one night stronger,

One sun surer, – thus much more

Than I loved thee, love before.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton / Owen Meredith (1831–1891)

3 JANUARY

Brother and Sister

I cannot choose but think upon the time

When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss

At lightest thrill from the bee’s swinging chime,

Because the one so near the other is.

He was the elder and a little man

Of forty inches, bound to show no dread,

And I the girl that puppy-like now ran,

Now lagged behind my brother’s larger tread.

I held him wise, and when he talked to me

Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best,

I thought his knowledge marked the boundary

Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest.

If he said ‘Hush!’ I tried to hold my breath;

Wherever he said ‘Come!’ I stepped in faith.

George Eliot (1819–1880)

4 JANUARY

My Thanks

ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENTED TO A FRIEND, LINES 61–68

O friend beloved, whose curious skill

Keeps bright the last year’s leaves and flowers,

With warm, glad, summer thoughts to fill

The cold, dark, winter hours!

Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring

May well defy the wintry cold,

Until, in Heaven’s eternal spring,

Life’s fairer ones unfold.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)

5 JANUARY

The Oblation

Ask nothing more of me, sweet;

All I can give you I give.

Heart of my heart, were it more,

More would be laid at your feet:

Love that should help you to live,

Song that should spur you to soar.

All things were nothing to give,

Once to have sense of you more,

Touch you and taste of you, sweet,

Think you and breathe you and live,

Swept of your wings as they soar,

Trodden by chance of your feet.

I that have love and no more

Give you but love of you, sweet:

He that hath more, let him give;

He that hath wings, let him soar;

Mine is the heart at your feet

Here, that must love you to live.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

6 JANUARY

XIV

FROM SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love’s sake only. Do not say

‘I love her for her smile – her look – her way

Of speaking gently – ; for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’ –

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may

Be changed, or change for thee, – and love so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry, –

A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love’s sake, that evermore

Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

7 JANUARY

The Reconcilement

Come, let us now resolve at last

To live and love in quiet;

We’ll tie the knot so very fast

That Time shall ne’er untie it.

The truest joys they seldom prove

Who free from quarrels live:

’Tis the most tender part of love

Each other to forgive.

When least I seem’d concern’d, I took

No pleasure nor no rest;

And when I feign’d an angry look,

Alas! I loved you best.

Own but the same to me – you’ll find

How blest will be our fate.

O to be happy – to be kind –

Sure never is too late!

John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (1648–1721)

8 JANUARY

If No One Ever Marries Me

If no one ever marries me –

And I don’t see why they should,

For nurse says I’m not pretty

And I’m seldom very good –

If no one ever marries me

I shan’t mind very much;

I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,

And a little rabbit hutch.

I shall have a cottage near a wood,

And a pony all my own,

And a little lamb, quite clean and tame,

That I can take to town.

And when I’m getting really old,

At twenty eight or nine,

I shall buy a little orphan girl

And bring her up as mine.

Laurence Alma-Tadema (c.1865–1940)

9 JANUARY

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play,

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,

Because I love you more than I can say,

If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,

There must be reasons why the leaves decay;

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,

The vision seriously intends to stay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,

And all the brooks and soldiers run away;

Will Time say nothing but I told you so?

If I could tell you I would let you know.

W. H. Auden (1907–1973)

10 JANUARY

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or come when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene’er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

You are soft as the nesting dove.

Come to my heart and bring it to rest

As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief

Or when my heart is merry;

Come with the falling of the leaf

Or with the redd’ning cherry.

Come when the year’s first blossom blows,

Come when the summer gleams and glows,

Come with the winter’s drifting snows,

And you are welcome, welcome.

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)

11 JANUARY

To Mr I. L.

Of that short Roll of friends writ in my heart

Which with thy name begins, since their depart,

Whether in the English Provinces they be,

Or drinke of Po, Sequan, or Danubie,

There’s none that sometime greets us not, and yet

Your Trent is Lethe; that past, us you forget.

You doe not duties of Societies,

If from th’ embrace of a lov’d wife you rise,

View your fat Beasts, stretch’d Barns, and labour’d fields,

Eat, play, ryde, take all joyes which all day yeelds,

And then againe to your embracements goe:

Some houres on us your friends, and some bestow

Upon your Muse, else both wee shall repent,

I that my love, she that her guifts on you are spent.

John Donne (1572–1631)

12 JANUARY

A Parting Song

‘O MES AMIS! RAPELLEZ-VOUS QUELQUEFOIS MES VERS! MON AME Y EST EMPREINTÉ.’ (MADAME DE STAËL)

When will ye think of me, my friends?

When will ye think of me?

When the last red light, the farewell of day,

From the rock and the river is passing away –

When the air with a deepening hush is fraught,

And the heart grows tender with burdened thought

Then let it be!

When will ye think of me, kind friends?

When will ye think of me?

When the rose of the rich midsummer-time

Is filled with the hues of its glorious prime –

When ye gather its bloom, as in bright hours fled,

From the walks where my footsteps no more may tread –

Then let it be!

When will ye think of me, sweet friends?

When will ye think of me?

When the sudden tears o’erflow your eye

At the sound of some olden melody –

When ye hear the voice of a mountain-stream,

When ye feel the charm of a poet’s dream –

Then let it be!

Thus let my memory be with you, friends!

Thus ever think of me!

Kindly and gently, but as of one

For whom ’tis well to be fled and gone –

As of a bird from a chain unbound,

As of a wanderer whose home is found –

So let it be.

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)

13 JANUARY

Song

Where the ash-tree weaves

Shadows over the river

And the willow’s grey leaves

Shake and quiver –

Meet me and talk, love,

Down the grasshopper’s baulk, love,

And then love forever.

There meet me and talk, love,

Of love’s inward feelings

Where the clouds look like chalk, love,

And the huts and the shielings

Lie like love o’er the river

Here talk of love’s feelings

And love on for ever.

Where the bee hums his ballads

By the river so near it

Round docks and wild salads

While all love to hear it,

We’ll meet by the river

And by the old willow-pollards

Bid love live for ever.

John Clare (1793–1864)

14 JANUARY

The Wealth of Youth

FROM DEDICATORY ODE

The wealth of youth, we spent it well

And decently, as very few can

And is it lost? I cannot tell:

And what is more, I doubt if you can.

The question’s very much too wide,

And much too deep, and much too hollow,

And learned men on either side

Use arguments I cannot follow.

They say that in the unchanging place,

Where all we loved is always dear,

We meet our morning face to face

And find at last our twentieth year …

They say (and I am glad they say)

It is so; and it may be so;

It may be just the other way,

I cannot tell. But this I know:

From quiet homes and first beginning,

Out to the undiscovered ends,

There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,

But laughter and the love of friends.

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953)

15 JANUARY

Luckes, My Faire Falcon

Luckes, my faire falcon, and your fellowes all,

How well plesaunt yt were your libertie!

Ye not forsake me that faire might ye befall.

But they that sometyme lykt my companye,

Like lyse awaye from ded bodies thei crall.

Loe, what a profe in light adversytie!

But ye, my birdes, I swear by all your belles,

Ye be my frynds, and so be but few elles.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)

16 JANUARY

A Sampler in a Farm House

FROM THE DIARY OF FRANCIS KILVERT

A little health,

A little wealth,

A little house and freedom,

And at the end

A little friend

And little cause to need him.

Anon

17 JANUARY

Sonnet

WRITTEN ON A BLANK PAGE IN SHAKESPEARE’S POEMS, FACING ‘A LOVER’S COMPLAINT’

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art –

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –

No – yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever – or else swoon to death.

John Keats (1795–1821)

18 JANUARY

The Human Touch

’Tis the human touch in this world that counts,

The touch of your hand and mine,

Which means far more to the fainting heart

Than shelter and bread and wine;

For shelter is gone when the night is o’er,

And bread lasts only a day.

But the touch of the hand and the sound of the voice

Sing on in the soul alway.

Spencer Michael Free (1856–1938)

19 JANUARY

Content and Rich

VERSES 1–11

I dwell in Grace’s court,

Enriched with Virtue’s rights;

Faith guides my wit, Love leads my will,

Hope all my mind delights.

In lowly vales I mount

To pleasure’s highest pitch;

My silly shroud true honour brings;

My poor estate is rich.

My conscience is my crown,

Contented thoughts my rest;

My heart is happy in itself;

My bliss is in my breast.

Enough, I reckon wealth;

A mean the surest lot,

That lies too high for base contempt,

Too low for envy’s shot.

My wishes are but few

All easy to fulfil;

I make the limits of my power

The bonds unto my will.

I have no hopes but one,

Which is of heavenly reign;

Effects attained, or not desired,

All lower hopes refrain.

I fear no care of coin;

Well-doing is my wealth;

My mind to me an empire is,

While grace affordeth health.

I clip high-climbing thoughts,

The wings of swelling pride;

Their fall is worst that from the height

Of greatest honour slide.

Sith sails of largest size

The storm doth soonest tear;

I bear so low and small a sail

As freeth me from fear.

I wrestle not with rage,

While fury’s flame doth burn;

It is in vain to stop the stream

Until the tide doth turn.

But when the flame is out,

And ebbing wrath doth end,

I turn a late enraged foe

Into a quiet friend.

Robert Southwell (1561–1595)

20 JANUARY

Metaphor of Sunshine

Heaven runs over

With sunshine which is poured into the brain

Of birds and poets, and kept for winter song;

And into flints to strike fire.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)

21 JANUARY

Abou Ben Hadhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold: –

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said,

‘What writest thou?’ – The vision rais’d its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answer’d, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’

‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so,’

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerily still; and said, ‘I pray thee then,

Write me as one who loves his fellow-men.’

The angel wrote and vanish’d. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And show’d the names whom love of God had bless’d,

And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

Leigh Hunt (1784–1859)

22 JANUARY

The English are Frosty

FROM THE WHITE CLIFFS

The English are frosty

When you’re no kith or kin

Of theirs, but how they alter

When once they take you in!

The kindest, the truest,

The best friends ever known,

It’s hard to remember

How they froze you to a bone.

They showed me all London,

Johnnie and his friends;

They took me to the country

For long weekends;

I never was so happy,

I never had such fun,

I stayed many weeks in England

Instead of just one.

Alice Duer Miller (1874–1942)

23 JANUARY

Sonnet XXX

Love is not all: it is not meat or drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It may well be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It may well be. I do not think I would.

Edna St Vincent Millay (1892–1950)

24 JANUARY

Claude to Eustace

FROM AMOURS DU VOYAGE, CANTO II, X

I am in love, meantime, you think; no doubt you would think so.

I am in love, you say; with those letters, of course, you would say so.

I am in love, you declare. I think not so; yet I grant you

It is a pleasure indeed to converse with this girl. Oh, rare gift,

Rare felicity, this! she can talk in a rational way, can

Speak upon subjects that really are matters of mind and of thinking,

Yet in perfection retain her simplicity; never, one moment,

Never, however you urge it, however you tempt her, consents to

Step from ideas and fancies and loving sensations to those vain

Conscious understandings that vex the minds of man-kind.

No, though she talk, it is music; her fingers desert not the keys; ’tis

Song, though you hear in the song the articulate vocables sounded,

Syllabled singly and sweetly the words of melodious meaning.

I am in love, you say; I do not think so, exactly.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)

25 JANUARY

Song

False though she be to me and Love,

I’ll ne’er pursue Revenge;

For still the Charmer I approve,

Tho’ I deplore her Change.

In Hours of Bliss we oft have met,

They could not always last;

And though the present I regret,

I’m grateful for the past.

William Congreve (1670–1729)

26 JANUARY

Daily Thoughts

JANUARY 26

A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and true ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit, for a while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ in their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there may be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for ever if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two ships who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall lose sight of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own pace for many days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again, and find themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long voyage is past.

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875)

27 JANUARY

Friendship

LINES 205–216

The noblest Friendship ever shewn

The Saviour’s history makes known,

Though some have turn’d and turn’d it;

And whether being craz’d or blind,

Or seeking with a bias’d mind,

Have not, it seems, discern’d it.

Oh Friendship! if my soul forego

Thy dear delights while here below;

To mortify and grieve me,

May I myself at last appear

Unworthy, base, and insincere,

Or may my friend deceive me!

William Cowper (1731–1800)

28 JANUARY

Foure Things Make Us Happy Here

Health is the first good lent to men;

A gentle disposition then:

Next, to be rich by no by-wayes;

Lastly, with friends t’enjoy our dayes.

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

29 JANUARY

Brave and Glorious

our journey was brief, it’s true,

but brave and glorious.

split four ways now: three extant,

one dead.

those visionary days quite distant.

mortgages, cholesterol checks.

the occasional text

perhaps.

Joel Knight (1975–)

30 JANUARY

If I Can Stop OneHeart From Breaking

If I can stop one Heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one Life the Aching

Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin

Unto his Nest again

I shall not live in Vain.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

31 JANUARY

Ballad

O sigh no more, love, sigh no more

Nor pine for earthly treasure

Who fears a shipwreck on the shore

Or meets despair with pleasure

Let not our wants our troubles prove

Although ’tis winter weather

Nor singly strive with what our love

Can better brave together

Thy love is proved thy worth is such

It cannot fail to bless me

If I loose thee I can’t be rich

Nor poor if I possess thee

John Clare (1793–1864)

FEBRUARY

Let Us Hold Hands

1 FEBRUARY

Ice On the Highway

Seven buxom women abreast, and arm in arm,

Trudge down the hill, tip-toed,

And breathing warm;

They must perforce trudge thus, to keep upright

On the glassy ice-bound road,

And they must get to market whether or no,

Provisions running low

With the nearing Saturday night,

While the lumbering van wherein they mostly ride

Can nowise go:

Yet loud their laughter as they stagger and slide!

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

2 FEBRUARY

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

3 FEBRUARY

To Mary Ann Lamb, the Author’s Best Friend and Sister

If from my lips some angry accents fell,

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,

’Twas but the error of a sickly mind

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well,

And waters clear, of Reason! And for me,

Let this my verse the poor atonement be –

My verse, which thou to praise wert e’er inclined

Too highly, and with a painful eye to see

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show

Kindest affection, and would oft-times lend

An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,

Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,

Mary, to thee, my sister, and my friend.

Charles Lamb (1775–1834)

4 FEBRUARY

Hope

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of Me.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

5 FEBRUARY

The Duck and the Kangaroo

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo,

‘Good gracious! how you hop!

Over the fields and the water too,

As if you never would stop!

My life is a bore in this nasty pond,

And I long to go out in the world beyond!

I wish I could hop like you!’

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

‘Please give me a ride on your back!’

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

‘I would sit quite still, and say nothing but “Quack,”

The whole of the long day through!

And we’d go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee,

Over the land, and over the sea; –

Please take me a ride! O do!’

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

Said the Kangaroo to the Duck,

‘This requires some little reflection;

Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck,

And there seems but one objection,

Which is, if you’ll let me speak so bold,

Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold,

And would probably give me the

roo-matiz!’ said the Kangaroo.

Said the Duck, ‘As I sate on the rocks,

I have thought over that completely,

And I bought four pairs of worsted socks

Which fit my web-feet neatly.

And to keep out the cold I’ve bought a cloak,

And every day a cigar I’ll smoke,

All to follow my own dear true

Love of a Kangaroo!’

Said the Kangaroo, ‘I’m ready!

All in the moonlight pale;

But to balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady!

And quite at the end of my tail!’

So away they went with a hop and a bound,

And they hopped the whole world three times round;

And who so happy, – O who,

As the Duck and the Kangaroo?

Edward Lear (1812–1888)

6 FEBRUARY

Friendship

LINES 25–46

For when two soules are chang’d and mixed soe,

It is what they and none but they can doe

And this is friendship, that abstracted flame

Which creeping mortals know not how to name.

All Love is sacred, and the marriage ty

Hath much of Honour and divinity.

But Lust, design, or some unworthy ends

May mingle there, which are despis’d by friends.

Passions hath violent extreams, and thus

All oppositions are contiguous.

So when the end is serv’d the Love will bate,

If friendship make it not more fortunate:

Friendship that Love’s elixir, that pure fire

Which burns the clearer ’cause it burns the higher.

For Love, like earthly fires (which will decay

If the materiall fuell be away)

Is with offensive smoake accompany’d,

And by resistance only is supply’d.

But friendship, like the fiery element,

With its own heat and nourishment content,

(Where neither hurt, nor smoke, nor noise is made)

Scorns the assistance of a forein ayde.

Katherine Philips (1632–1664)

7 FEBRUARY

A True Friend

FROM ON FRIENDSHIP

A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

8 FEBRUARY

Sonnet

FROM LA VITA NUOVA

Love and the gentle heart are one same thing,

Even as the wise man in his ditty saith:

Each, of itself, would be such life in death

As rational soul bereft of reasoning.

’Tis Nature makes them when she loves: a king

Love is, whose palace where he sojourneth

Is called the Heart; there draws he quiet breath

At first, with brief or longer slumbering.

Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind

Will make the eyes desire, and through the heart

Send the desiring of the eyes again;

Where often it abides so long enshrin’d

That Love at length out of his sleep will start.

And women feel the same for worthy men.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)

Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

9 FEBRUARY

CXIX