A Poem for Every Spring Day Read online

  Fair daffodils, we weep to see

  You haste away so soon;

  As yet the early-rising sun

  Has not attain’d his noon.

  Stay, stay,

  Until the hasting day

  Has run

  But to the evensong;

  And, having prayed together, we

  Will go with you along.

  We have short time to stay, as you,

  We have as short a spring;

  As quick a growth to meet decay,

  As you, or anything.

  We die,

  As your hours do, and dry

  Away,

  Like to the summer’s rain;

  Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

  Ne’er to be found again.

  15 March • from Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

  In the Roman calendar the Ides of March is a date which corresponds to 15 March in our calendar – each month had an Ides which signified, roughly, its midpoint. On the Ides of March 44 bc Julius Caesar, the great statesman and general, was assassinated in the Roman senate. These lines come from the famous scene in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, in which a soothsayer (or fortune teller) warns Caesar of imminent danger. Perhaps if they had offered some more information than just the rather cryptic ‘beware’, Caesar would have been more inclined to heed their advice. As it is, Caesar joins Macbeth and Antony in the pantheon of Shakespeare characters who should have listened more carefully to their prophecies.

  CAESAR

  Who is it in the press that calls on me?

  I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,

  Cry ‘Caesar!’ Speak; Caesar is turn’d to hear.

  SOOTHSAYER

  Beware the Ides of March.

  CAESAR

  What man is that?

  BRUTUS

  A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.

  CAESAR

  Set him before me; let me see his face.

  CASSIUS

  Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

  CAESAR

  What say’st thou to me now? Speak once again.

  SOOTHSAYER

  Beware the Ides of March.

  CAESAR

  He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

  16 March • Go and Catch a Falling Star • John Donne

  This poem at first hides its theme. It asks the reader to perform impossible tasks relating to mythological things and beings, and to go on lifelong travels. Only at the end of the second stanza is it revealed that these impossibilities are being used as a cynical, and rather bitter comparison to another ostensibly unfeasible endeavour: finding a true and fair woman

  Go and catch a falling star,

  Get with child a mandrake root,

  Tell me where all past years are,

  Or who cleft the Devil’s foot;

  Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

  Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

  And find

  What wind

  Serves to advance an honest mind.

  If thou be’st born to strange sights,

  Things invisible to see,

  Ride ten thousand days and nights

  Till Age snow white hairs on thee;

  Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,

  All strange wonders that befell thee,

  And swear,

  No where

  Lives a woman true and fair.

  If thou find’st one, let me know;

  Such a pilgrimage were sweet.

  Yet do not; I would not go,

  Though at next door we might meet.

  Though she were true when you met her,

  And last, till you write your letter,

  Yet she

  Will be

  False, ere I come, to two or three.

  16 March • Toad • Norman MacCaig

  The Scottish poet Norman MacCaig often wrote about the natural world and animals, such as the toad in this poem. This poem’s positivity is a refreshing way to look at a creature that is often regarded as ugly, or even scary.

  Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse

  Squeeze under the rickety door and sit,

  Full of satisfaction in a man’s house?

  You clamber towards me on your four corners –

  Right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot.

  I love you for being a toad,

  For crawling like a Japanese wrestler,

  And for not being frightened

  I put you in my purse hand not shutting it,

  And set you down outside directly under

  Every star.

  A jewel in your head? Toad,

  You’ve put one in mine,

  A tiny radiance in a dark place.

  17 March • Ich Am of Irlaunde • Anon.

  17 March is St Patrick’s Day. As St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, it is also a day on which people celebrate the culture and history of the ‘Emerald Isle’. St Patrick’s Day is thought to be the most widely celebrated national festival in the world. The song ‘Ich am of Irlaunde’ is a traditional medieval poem originating in around the year 1300. Reading and making sense of a poem like this can require some concentration, but it is also rewarding; it teaches us about the history of the English language itself.

  Ich am of Irlaunde,

  And of the holy londe

  Of Irlande.

  Gode sire, pray ich thee,

  For of sainte charite,

  Come an daunce wit me

  In Irlaunde.

  Translation

  I am of Ireland,

  and of the holy realm

  of Ireland.

  Good sir, I pray thee:

  for the sake of holy charity,

  come dance with me

  in Ireland.

  17 March • He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven • W. B. Yeats

  William Butler Yeats is one of Ireland’s most revered poets and is remembered as one of the key figures of the twentieth-century literary movement known as modernism. Although he accomplished many great things in his career – not least winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 – he would have probably traded all his achievements for a reciprocation of his love for his muse. This is one of his shortest, and most heartbreaking, poems written to Maud Gonne, who sadly never agreed to marry him despite numerous proposals – and poems!

  Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

  Enwrought with golden and silver light,

  The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

  Of night and light and the half-light,

  I would spread the cloths under your feet:

  But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

  18 March • Spring Snow • John Foster

  The cinquain (a poem of five lines with two, four, six, eight and two syllables on each line) is the perfect format for John Foster’s poem which concentrates on the fleeting beauty of snowflakes.

  Snowflakes

  Slip from the sky

  Like soft white butterflies,

  Brush the trees with their flimsy wings,

  Vanish.

  18 March • Meeting at Night • Robert Browning

  This love poem was written around 1845, when Robert Browning was courting his future wife, the poet Elizabeth Barrett. The simple narrative of the poem focuses less on the meeting of the lovers, and more on the journey leading up to that meeting. We do not have much access to the narrator’s thoughts, but through the images of the sea and the landscape he passes, we experience a sense of mounting anticipation.

  The grey sea and the long black land;

  And the yellow half-moon large and low;

  And the startled little waves that leap

  In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

  As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

  An
d quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

  Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

  Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

  A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

  And blue spurt of a lighted match,

  And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,

  Than the two hearts beating each to each!

  19 March • Historical Associations • Robert Louis Stevenson

  Among Robert Louis Stevenson’s most famous works today are the novels Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He was also noted for his wonderful volume of poetry, A Child’s Garden of Verses. This imaginative poem is a series of reflections, or jumps between thoughts, as a child, playing with his uncle, travels far and wide through geography and history, and still gets home in time for tea.

  Dear Uncle Jim, this garden ground

  That now you smoke your pipe around,

  Has seen immortal actions done

  And valiant battles lost and won.

  Here we had best on tip-toe tread,

  While I for safety march ahead,

  For this is that enchanted ground

  Where all who loiter slumber sound.

  Here is the sea, here is the sand,

  Here is simple Shepherd’s Land,

  Here are the fairy hollyhocks,

  And there are Ali Baba’s rocks.

  But yonder, see! apart and high,

  Frozen Siberia lies; where I,

  With Robert Bruce and William Tell,

  Was bound by an enchanter’s spell.

  There, then, awhile in chains we lay,

  In wintry dungeons, far from day;

  But ris’n at length, with might and main,

  Our iron fetters burst in twain.

  Then all the horns were blown in town;

  And to the ramparts clanging down,

  All the giants leaped to horse

  And charged behind us through the gorse.

  On we rode, the others and I,

  Over the mountains blue, and by

  The Silver River, the sounding sea

  And the robber woods of Tartary.

  A thousand miles we galloped fast,

  And down the witches’ lane we passed,

  And rode amain, with brandished sword,

  Up to the middle, through the ford.

  Last we drew rein – a weary three –

  Upon the lawn, in time for tea,

  And from our steeds alighted down

  Before the gates of Babylon.

  19 March • Three Good Things • Jan Dean

  This is a perfect poem to put under your pillow and read at day’s end.

  At day’s end I remember

  three good things.

  Apples maybe – their skinshine smell

  and soft froth of juice.

  Water maybe – the pond in the park

  dark and full of secret fish.

  A mountain maybe – that I saw in a film,

  or climbed last holiday,

  and suddenly today it thundered up

  into a playground game.

  Or else an owl – I heard an owl today,

  and I made bread.

  My head is full of all these things,

  it’s hard to choose just three.

  I let remembering fill me up

  with all good things

  so that good things will overflow

  into my sleeping self,

  and in the morning

  good things will be waiting

  when I wake.

  20 March • A Morning Song • Eleanor Farjeon

  Around 19–21 March is the Vernal Equinox, which is the start of spring. These words were written in 1931 by Eleanor Farjeon, but became well known as a hymn after they were set to a Gaelic tune.

  Morning has broken

  Like the first morning,

  Blackbird has spoken

  Like the first bird.

  Praise for the singing!

  Praise for the morning!

  Praise for them, springing

  From the first Word.

  Sweet the rain’s new fall,

  Sunlit from heaven,

  Like the first dewfall

  In the first hour.

  Praise for the sweetness,

  Of the wet garden,

  Sprung in completeness

  From the first shower.

  Mine is the sunlight!

  Mine is the morning

  Born of the one light

  Eden saw play.

  Praise with elation,

  Praise every morning

  Spring’s re-creation

  Of the new day!

  20 March • from Pippa Passes • Robert Browning

  This poem from Browning’s verse drama Pippa Passes is a poem about beginnings – about dew-pearled mornings, and a year about to blossom. Pippa celebrates the simple wonders of nature, finding a connection between the snail resting on a thorn and the idea of God in heaven.

  The year’s at the spring

  And day’s at the morn;

  Morning’s at seven;

  The hillside’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!

  21 March • Spring • Christina Rossetti

  Spring is the season of life, birth and rebirth. But poetry often finds reminders of things in their opposites, and even life can serve to be a reminder of death. In Rossetti’s simple song of spring, the poet cannot resist seeing the season of spring as a time ‘that passes by’ all too soon.

  Frost-locked all the winter,

  Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,

  What shall make their sap ascend

  That they may put forth shoots?

  Tips of tender green,

  Leaf, or blade, or sheath;

  Telling of the hidden life

  That breaks forth underneath,

  Life nursed in its grave by Death.

  Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,

  Drips the soaking rain,

  By fits looks down the waking sun:

  Young grass springs on the plain;

  Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;

  Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,

  Swollen with sap put forth their shoots;

  Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;

  Birds sing and pair again.

  There is no time like Spring,

  When life’s alive in everything,

  Before new nestlings sing,

  Before cleft swallows speed their journey back

  Along the trackless track –

  God guides their wing,

  He spreads their table that they nothing lack, –

  Before the daisy grows a common flower

  Before the sun has power

  To scorch the world up in his noontide hour.

  There is no time like Spring,

  Like Spring that passes by;

  There is no life like Spring-life born to die,

  Piercing the sod,

  Clothing the uncouth clod,

  Hatched in the nest,

  Fledged on the windy bough,

  Strong on the wing:

  There is no time like Spring that passes by,

  Now newly born, and now

  Hastening to die.

  21 March • Flowers and Moonlight on the Spring River • Yang-Ti, translated by Arthur Waley

  The emperor Yang-Ti ruled the Sui Dynasty in China from 604 to his death in 618. Despite his infamous reputation as one of China’s most cruel and tyrannical sovereigns, he was also a sensitive soul, capable of writing such beautiful, meditative lines such as these, which transport us to an exotic world, and evoke the simultaneous radiance and transience of nature. Whether he was the best poet of his generation we’ll never know, as Yang was known to execute any writers who he feared might be superio
r to him.

  The evening river is level and motionless –

  The spring colours just open to their full.

  Suddenly a wave carries the moon away

  And the tidal water comes with its freight of stars.

  22 March • Spring • William Blake

  Blake’s collection of poems Songs of Innocence and Experience is celebrated as a great experiment in poetry, where he offsets the plain songs of joy of ‘Innocence’ with the complicated reflections found in ‘Experience’. But even in the simpler poems we find Blake playing around with rhythms, such as the three-syllable rhymed lines in this poem about spring.

  Sound the Flute

  Now it’s mute.

  Birds delight

  Day and Night;

  Nightingale

  In the dale

  Lark in Sky,

  Merrily,

  Merrily, Merrily, to welcome in the Year.

  Little Boy,

  Full of joy;

  Little Girl,

  Sweet and small;

  Cock does crow,

  So do you;

  Merry voice,

  Infant noise,

  Merrily, Merrily, to welcome in the Year.

  Little Lamb,

  Here I am;

  Come and lick

  My white neck;

  Let me pull

  Your soft Wool;

  Let me kiss

  Your soft face:

  Merrily, Merrily, we welcome in the Year.

  22 March • The Trees • Philip Larkin

  Philip Larkin’s work was famously melancholy, yet this poem deals with an optimistic subject: the approach of spring.

  The trees are coming into leaf

  Like something almost being said;

  The recent buds relax and spread,

  Their greenness is a kind of grief.

  Is it that they are born again

  And we grow old? No, they die too.

  Their yearly trick of looking new

  Is written down in rings of grain.

  Yet still the unresting castles thresh

  In fullgrown thickness every May.

  Last year is dead, they seem to say,

  Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

  23 March • Sonnet 98 • William Shakespeare