It’s working for me to look for classic poets born in whatever month. This turns out to be a pretty decent way of finding poets I’m less familiar with, who were writing long enough ago that their poems are public domain. Johannes Vilhelm Jensen was born (in January) in 1873 and died in 1950, so here we are. He was a Danish poet, as you might guess from the last line of this poem, which is certainly a great poem for this time of year:
Solstice Song
Our sun has now grown cold,
we are in winter’s hold
the days are waning.
Now, past the deepest night,
our hope burns bright –
yes, hope burns bright,
for now the sun will right,
now light will soon return, the days again are gaining.
The lovely fir tree green
betokens summer’s screen
of woods imposing.
In Christmas candlelight
like star-hosts bright,
yes, star-hosts bright,
sun’s wonder is in sight
and all the yellow flower-suns that now are dozing.
The fir-tree’s charry scent
gives air to summers spent
and each newcomer.
Cool Danish years all swing,
dance in a ring,
yes, in a ring
round an eternal spring.
Let all souls also sing of Denmark’s lovely summer!
***
Since I’ve picked spring as the theme, here’s another spring poem, this time by an English poet. This one is longer, but even though I usually try to find short-ish poems, let’s go for it. Here in the depths of winter, I’m sure we’re all in a mood to feel enthusiastic about spring!
***
Ode to the West Wind
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Please Feel Free to Share:
Let’s hang onto them, Teen, but I really like the imagery and language in these, and I’m sure I’ll be doing a height-of-summer poem at some point!
Sorry. please cancel previous post, it got garbled
Because I will be singing for this on Sunday the 2nd, I offer a 100 year old bit of verse that hails something yet to come. Not the spring you were writing about, but hey, it only comes once a year.
Author, Evelyn Underhill. Written 1915:
In the past years,
We joyed to play the mystery of old;
Strange poem, and sweet
Conclusion of Incarnate Love that told
How a new light was to the Gentiles brought,
A clean and holy light, to pierce the glooms of thought.
We lit our candles to enray the dim,
Gave each to each the flame that figured him:
Yet, in that distant day, the darkness held no fears.
But now all’s changed: we, tempest-driven,
To the great night are given.
Beneath our feet
The puzzled world is reeling to despair,
And on its black horizon there’s a glare
That mocks our little light.
Dare we, in such a day,
Through all the drifting cohorts of our dead,
And across fields wherefrom the lovely life has fled,
Carry the torch of faith upon its way,
Fulfil the ancient rite?
As sudden lightning mars
The kindly radiance of eternal stars,
So does the splendour of his fury shame
That small, dear flame.
Yet, when the storm is done,
And ere the promised rising of the sun
Makes all thing new,
There comes a black and stilly hour, when all
The quiet stars shine out perpetual
And every homely lamp that seemed to cease
Burns with young beauty in the empty place,
Because the lights are few.
Then, perchance, one
Raising his anguished face,
His poor grey face, from those swept fields of pain,
And peering in the dark before the day,
Most glad shall greet
Our humble light again.
And say,
“Mine eyes have seen, and I depart in peace.”
Posted by Clerk of Oxford at 10:22 am
And another: Thomas Trahern- you might like reading him, you might not. I know I’d never heard of him before, but like his language very much:
My parched and withered bones
Burnt up did seem; my soul was full of groans;
My thoughts extensions were:
Like paces, reaches, steps they did appear;
They somewhat hotly did pursue,
Knew that they had not all their due,
Nor ever quiet were.
But made my flesh like hungry, thirsty ground,
My heart a deep profound abyss,
And every joy and pleasure a wound,
So long as I my blessedness did miss.
Oh happiness! A famine burns,
And all my life to anguish turns!
Where are the silent streams,
The living waters and the glorious beams,
The sweet reviving bowers,
The shady groves, the sweet and curious flowers,
The springs and trees, the heavenly days,
The flow’ry meads, and glorious rays,
The gold and silver towers?
Alas! all these are poor and empty things!
Trees, waters, days, and shining beams,
Fruits, flowers, bowers, shady groves, and springs,
No joy will yield, no more than silent streams;
Those are but dead material toys,
And cannot make my heavenly joys.
And one by an Edward Thomas:
The Glory
The glory of the beauty of the morning, –
The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew;
The blackbird that has found it, and the dove
That tempts me on to something sweeter than love;
White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay;
The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancy
Of sky and meadow and forest and my own heart: –
The glory invites me, yet it leaves me scorning
All I can ever do, all I can be,
Beside the lovely of motion, shape, and hue,
The happiness I fancy fit to dwell
In beauty’s presence. Shall I now this day
Begin to seek as far as heaven, as hell,
Wisdom or strength to match this beauty, start
And tread the pale dust pitted with small dark drops,
In hope to find whatever it is I seek,
Hearkening to short-lived happy-seeming things
That we know naught of, in the hazel copse?
Or must I be content with discontent
As larks and swallows are perhaps with wings?
And shall I ask at the day’s end once more
What beauty is, and what I can have meant
By happiness? And shall I let all go,
Glad, weary, or both? Or shall I perhaps know
That I was happy oft and oft before,
Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent,
How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to,
Is Time? I cannot bite the day to the core.
I have some for summer as well. Would you like them now or later?
Well then. Here’s another for spring:
Excerpt from “The Seafarer”:
The woods take on blossoms, towns become fair,
fields grow beautiful, the world hastens on;
all these things urge on the eager mind,
the spirit to the journey, in one who thinks to travel
far on the paths of the sea.
The cuckoo too gives warning with mournful voice,
summer’s watchman sings, foretells sorrow,
bitter in the heart. Of this that man knows nothing,
the warrior blessed with wealth, what some endure
who furthest tread the paths of exile.
And so now my spirit roams beyond the confines of the heart,
my spirit over the sea-flood;
it wanders wide over the whale’s home,
the expanse of the earth, and comes back to me
eager and greedy; the lone flier cries,
incites the heart to the whale’s way, irresistible,
across the ocean’s floods. And so to me
the joys of the Lord are warmer than this dead life,
lent on land.
read the rest here http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Sfr
I also refer to this site fairly often, and I garuntee its contents will not be half-so familiar as even more obscure English work might be.
https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/
From the Owl and the Nightingale, the Nightingale’s riposte to the Owl’s argument on the merits fo singing solemnly in the still nights of winter.
“That’s what you do on your side:
For when the snow lies thick and wide,
And every creature feels sorrow,
Then you sing from eve ’til morrow.
But I all brightness with me bring:
Each creature’s glad at my coming!
They all rejoice when I arrive,
And at my coming all are blithe.
The blossom starts to spring and spread,
Both in the tree and on the mead.
The lily, white and fair as snow,
Welcomes me, as you well know;
And beckons with her pretty eye,
To say that I must to her fly;
The rose, with her complexion red,
Growing from the thorny hedge,
Bids me that I must sing,
For her love, one little thing;
And so I do, by night and day,
The more I sing, the more I may.
I give them pleasure by my song,
Yet, nonetheless, not for too long –
Though I like to see them glad,
Too much pleasure makes men sad.
When all is done for which I came
Away I fare – and wise I am!
When men’s minds turn towards their sheaves
And yellow comes to the green leaves,
Then I go home, and take my leave;
I don’t care a bit for winter’s grief!
When I see the hard times come,
I travel back to my own home,
And thanks and love I with me take,
Because I worked here for their sake.”
And another: “Spring is come with love to town,”
somewhat free translation from the very old English
http://wpwt.soton.ac.uk/harl2253/lenten/lenttext.htm
Spring is come with love to town,
With blossom and with birds’ song,
Which brings all this bliss.
Daisies in the dales,
Sweet notes of nightingales;
Every bird sings a song.
The threstlecock is chiding,
All their winter woe is gone
When the woodruff springs.
These birds sing in great numbers,
And chirp about their wealth of joys,
So that all the wood rings.
Shelley’s reference to old palaces and towers in Baiae’s bay makes me think of the underwater archeological excavations that are taking place there today. I wonder how much they could see in Shelley’s day.
I’ll have to look that up, Jeanine — I didn’t know there were underwater archeological digs there!
Yeah, in fact it’s been preserved as a protected archaelogical park with UNESCO status. I think they were restoring some opus sectile mosaics last I heard. (Can you tell archaeology is one of my loves? ) Let me see if I can link a recent article.
Extremely neat, Jeanine, and your http address worked fine; I replaced it with a live link in your comment in case anybody else wants to click on it.
If you like murder mysteries, you might like this one, which involves the underwater excavation of a ship.
Thank you so much for the recommendation; it’s a very good one! Funnily enough, this was the exact book about underwater archaeology that I thought of before I opened the link, although there were several possibilities such as Barbara Michaels’ The Sea King’s Daughter. I like Connor’s entire series with this MC, and Connor (and her husband?) has another good series with a different MC that I also enjoy. But, of course, I’m partial to any books featuring archaeology, and have collected many over the years. That would be a fun project for another day, to list them all.
I’m not surprised you already knew about that series. Both series. They’re some of my favorite-ever mysteries, despite a certain plausibility issue with the crossover novel that winds up the two series. Now I guess I should take a look at The Sea King’s Daughter.
I love Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters but am forced to admit that book isn’t one of her best. I much prefer her Jacqueline Kirby or Vicky Bliss books, but no underwater archaeology in those.
Don’t tell any of my former English teachers, but personally I find Percy Bysshe an extremely annoying person.
That’ll stay just between us, Evelyn!
I don’t personally like Whitman at all, but shh.