by Allie Esiri
Shakespeare’s sonnets are carefully measured – each line must have ten syllables, which alternate in stresses, and there must be a total of fourteen lines. They are usually arranged into very particular rhyme schemes, and end with a couplet, which offers a final thought of its own.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d, and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you – you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
23 March • in Just- • E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings was an American poet. In his poetry, the layout of the text on the page is crucial in establishing its meaning: in this poem, the differing sentence lengths create a feeling of excitement and change.
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
24 March • The Frog and the Nightingale • Vikram Seth
This powerful rhyming fable about a cunning frog and a gullible nightingale is by the acclaimed Indian novelist and poet, Vikram Seth. It is a cautionary tale, whose moral is to beware of the unscrupulous master, and always to have self-belief.
Once upon a time a frog
Croaked away in Bingle Bog.
Every night from dusk to dawn
He croaked awn and awn and awn.
Other creatures loathed his voice,
But, alas, they had no choice,
And the crass cacophony
Blared out from the sumac tree
At whose foot the frog each night
Minstrelled on till morning night.
Neither stones nor prayers nor sticks,
Insults or complaints or bricks
Stilled the frog’s determination
To display his heart’s elation.
But one night a nightingale
In the moonlight cold and pale
Perched upon the sumac tree
Casting forth her melody.
Dumbstruck sat the gaping frog
And the whole admiring bog
Stared towards the sumac, rapt,
And, when she had ended, clapped.
Ducks had swum and herons waded
To her as she serenaded,
And a solitary loon
Wept beneath the summer moon.
Toads and teals and tiddlers, captured
By her voice, cheered on, enraptured:
‘Bravo!’ ‘Too divine!’ ‘Encore!’
So the nightingale once more,
Quite unused to such applause,
Sang till dawn without a pause.
Next night when the nightingale
Shook her head and twitched her tail,
Closed an eye and fluffed a wing,
And had cleared her throat to sing
She was startled by a croak.
‘Sorry – was that you who spoke?’
She enquired when the frog
Hopped towards her from the bog.
‘Yes,’ the frog replied. ‘You see,
I’m the frog who owns this tree.
In this bog I’ve long been known
For my splendid baritone
And, of course, I wield my pen
For Bog Trumpet now and then.’
‘Did you … did you like my song?’
‘Not too bad – but far too long.
The technique was fine, of course,
But it lacked a certain force.’
‘Oh!’ the nightingale confessed,
Greatly flattered and impressed
That a critic of such note
Had discussed her art and throat:
‘I don’t think the song’s divine.
But – oh, well – at least it’s mine.’
‘That’s not much to boast about,’
Said the heartless frog. ‘Without
Proper training such as I
– And few others – can supply.
You’ll remain a mere beginner.
But with me you’ll be a winner.’
‘Dearest frog,’ the nightingale
Breathed: ‘This is a fairy tale –
And you are Mozart in disguise
Come to earth before my eyes.’
‘Well, I charge a modest fee.’
‘Oh!’ ‘But it won’t hurt, you’ll see.’
Now the nightingale, inspired,
Flushed with confidence, and fired
With both art and adoration,
Sang – and was a huge sensation.
Animals for miles around
Flocked towards the magic sound,
And the frog with great precision
Counted heads and charged admission.
Though next morning it was raining,
He began her vocal training.
‘But I can’t sing in this weather.’
‘Come, my dear – we’ll sing together.
Just put on your scarf and sash.
Koo-oh-ah! ko-ash! ko-ash!’
So the frog and nightingale
Journeyed up and down the scale
For six hours, till she was shivering
And her voice was hoarse and quivering.
Though subdued and sleep deprived,
In the night her throat revived,
And the sumac tree was bowed
With a breathless, titled crowd:
Owl of Sandwich, Duck of Kent,
Mallard and Milady Trent,
Martin Cardinal Mephisto,
And the Coot of Monte Cristo.
Ladies with tiaras glittering
In the interval sat twittering –
And the frog observed them glitter
With a joy both sweet and bitter.
Every day the frog who’d sold her
Songs for silver tried to scold her:
‘You must practise even longer
Till your voice, like mine, grows stronger.
In the second song last night
You got nervous in mid-flight.
And, my dear, lay on more trills:
Audiences enjoy such frills.
You must make your public happier:
Give them something sharper, snappier.
We must aim for better billings.
You still owe me sixty shillings.’
Day by day the nightingale
Grew more sorrowful and pale.
Night on night her tired song
Zipped and trilled and bounced along,
Till the birds and beasts grew tired
At a voice so uninspired
And the ticket office gross
Crashed, and she grew more morose –
For her ears were now addicted
To applause quite unrestricted,
And to sing into the night
All alone gave no delight.
Now the frog puffed up with rage.
‘Brainless bird – you’re on the stage –
Use your wits, and follow fashion.
Puff your lungs out with your passion.’
Trembling, terrified to fail,
Blind with tears, the nightingale
Heard him out in silence, tried,
Puffed up, burst a vein, and died.
Said the frog: ‘I tried to teach her,
But she was a stupid creature –
Far too nervous, far too tense,
Far too prone to influence.
Well, poor bird – she should have known
That your song must be your own.
That’s why I sing with panache:
‘Koo-oh-ah! ko-ash! ko-ash!’
And the foghorn of the frog
Blared unrivalled through the bog.
24 March • The Knight’s Tomb • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge wrote ‘The Knight’s Tomb’ in 1817, long after the days when valiant knights roamed England wielding swords. The poem is filled with images of England’s past and its natural beauty, yet Coleridge was writing during the Industrial Revolution when these natural spaces seemed in great peril.
Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O’Kellyn?
Where may the grave of that good man be?—
By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
Under the twigs of a young birch tree!
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.—
The Knight’s bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;—
His soul is with the saints, I trust.
25 March • Today • Billy Collins
Billy Collins is among the foremost American poets alive today, and was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. This is an example of how a poem can surprise us, by taking us on a journey through a writer’s thoughts and feelings, in a single sentence.
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
25 March • In a Station of the Metro • Ezra Pound
For Pound, the visual image of a poem was closely linked to its meaning, and he insisted that this poem was printed in the striking layout shown below. It brings the presence of nature into the urban Parisian station – even here the springtime imagery of rainy woodlands and blossoms is discernible.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .
26 March • I Remember, I Remember • Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood was a Victorian poet who, like Christina Rossetti, was concerned with the powers of memory and remembering. Unlike Rossetti’s ‘Remember’, Hood’s poem is a lively celebration of memory right up until its final lines.
I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!
I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday, –
The tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!
I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from heav’n
Than when I was a boy.
26 March • A Donkey • Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes, who grew up in rural West Yorkshire, often wrote poems about animals. The repetition of ‘I like’ conveys an affection for all of the animal’s bizarre features.
His face is what I like.
And his head, much too big for his body – a toy head,
A great, rabbit-eared, pantomime head,
And his friendly rabbit face,
His big, friendly, humorous eyes – which can turn wicked,
Long and devilish, when he lays his ears back.
But mostly he’s comical – and that’s what I like.
I like the joke he seems
Always just about to tell me. And the laugh,
The rusty, pump-house engine that cranks up laughter
From some long-ago, far off, laughter-less desert –
The dry, hideous guffaw
That makes his great teeth nearly fall out.
27 March • Ballad of the Bread Man • Charles Causley
Charles Causley was a twentieth-century Cornish writer. As popular among the celebrity poets of his day as he was with readers, he counted Siegfried Sassoon and Ted Hughes as close friends. The ‘Ballad of the Bread Man’ is a modernized telling of the life and death of Jesus. Even the three wise men appear, as a bishop, a general, and an African leader. Though it begins in comic fashion, it ends on a very different tone, and the final stanza reveals Causley’s own view of the modern attitude towards spiritual knowledge. Jesus returns from the dead, only to find that the public still has no interest in his message of peace and morality. Causley lived through the Second World War, and may have had those experiences in mind.
Mary stood in the kitchen
Baking a loaf of bread.
An angel flew in through the window.
‘We’ve a job for you,’ he said.
‘God in his big gold heaven
Sitting in his big blue chair,
Wanted a mother for his little son.
Suddenly saw you there.’
Mary shook and trembled,
‘It isn’t true what you say.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said the angel.
‘The baby’s on its way.’
Joseph was in the workshop
Planing a piece of wood.
‘The old man’s past it,’ the neighbours said.
‘That girl’s been up to no good.’
‘And who was that elegant fellow,’
They said, ‘in the shiny gear?’
The things they said about Gabriel
Were hardly fit to hear.
Mary never answered,
Mary never replied.
She kept the information,
Like the baby, safe inside.
It was the election winter.
They went to vote in town.
When Mary found h
er time had come
The hotels let her down.
The baby was born in an annexe
Next to the local pub.
At midnight, a delegation
Turned up from the Farmers’ Club.
They talked about an explosion
That made a hole in the sky,
Said they’d been sent to the Lamb and Flag
To see God come down from on high.
A few days later a bishop
And a five-star general were seen
With the head of an African country
In a bullet-proof limousine.
‘We’ve come,’ they said, ‘with tokens
For the little boy to choose.’
Told the tale about war and peace
In the television news.
After them came the soldiers
With rifle and bombs and gun,
Looking for enemies of the state.
The family had packed up and gone.
When they got back to the village
The neighbours said, to a man,
‘That boy will never be one of us,
Though he does what he blessed well can.’
He went round to all the people
A paper crown on his head.
Here is some bread from my father.
Take, eat, he said.
Nobody seemed very hungry.
Nobody seemed to care.
Nobody saw the God in himself
Quietly standing there.
He finished up in the papers,
He came to a very bad end.
He was charged with bringing the living to life.
No man was that prisoner’s friend.
There’s only one kind of punishment
To fit that kind of crime.
They rigged a trial and shot him dead.
They were only just in time.
They lifted the young man by the leg,
They lifted him by the arm,
They locked him in a cathedral
In case he came to harm.
They stored him safe as water
Under seven rocks.
One Sunday morning he burst out
Like a jack-in-the-box.
Through the town he went walking.
He showed them the holes in his head.
Now do you want any loaves? he cried.
‘Not today,’ they said.
27 March • The Donkey • G. K. Chesterton
Like Charles Causley, G.K Chesterton also provides us with a wholly original and imaginative perspective on the life of Christ, almost certainly the most widely-known and influential narrative in the Western canon. Here the narrator is neither Jesus nor disciple, saint or apostle. Instead, it’s a donkey who recounts his history and his moment of glory: the Biblical event of Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and a jubilant crowd scattered palm branches in his path.
