by Allie Esiri
When man first flew beyond the sky
He looked back into the world’s blue eye.
Man said: What makes your eye so blue?
Earth said: The tears in the ocean do.
Why are the seas so full of tears?
Because I’ve wept so many thousand years.
Why do you weep as you dance through space?
Because I am the mother of the human race.
13 April • The Song of Wandering Aengus • W. B. Yeats
Many of Yeats’s poems draw on ancient mythology and Irish tradition. Here he draws on the figure of Aengus, a god of love and youth – but for Yeats he becomes an old figure, pursuing his past.
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
13 April • Baisakhi • Anon.
Celebrated on 13 or 14 April, Baisakhi is the festival of Sikh New Year, which commemorates the founding of the Sikh community in 1699 in an event known as the Khalsa. This anonymous poem is filled with names unique to the Sikh religion: Amrit is a syrup sacred to Sikh which is drunk at religious observances such as baptisms, and the Five Beloved Ones were the first men to be baptized into the Sikh faith in 1699. Baisakhi is regarded as the most important festival for Sikhs, though it is celebrated as a harvest festival by people of other faiths in the Punjab region.
Crystals of sugar
swirl
as the sword
stirs Amrit.
Listening to the tale
of the Five Beloved Ones,
who dodged death
by giving their lives
to God.
14 April • The Woods and Banks • W. H. Davies
Mid-April marks the arrival of cuckoos. They are said to arrive on St. Tiburtius’s day, which is today: Cuckoo Day. W. H. Davies – an extraordinary writer, who lived for many years as a homeless person – here celebrates the unique call that gives the cuckoo its name: cuckoo, cuckoo!
The woods and banks of England now,
Late coppered with dead leaves and old,
Have made the early violets grow,
And bulge with knots of primrose gold.
Hear how the blackbird flutes away,
Whose music scorns to sleep at night:
Hear how the cuckoo shouts all day
For echoes – to the world’s delight:
Hullo, you imp of wonder, you –
Where are you now, cuckoo? Cuckoo?
14 April • O Captain! My Captain! • Walt Whitman
This poem was written in 1865 by Walt Whitman in response to the assassination of the American president Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was shot on 14 April 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. He died the next morning. It is an ‘elegy’, meaning a poem of mourning for the dead, and the entire piece is an extended metaphor, imagining America as a ship, and Lincoln as the ship’s captain.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
15 April • Ode on the Loss of the Titanic • Geoffrey Hill
Early on the morning of 15 April 1912, RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank in the icy waters of the north Atlantic. Over 1,500 people died – almost three-quarters of the passengers and crew on board at the time. It is fixed in the popular imagination as one of the worst, most shocking maritime disasters of all time. Geoffrey Hill’s short lines on the Titanic themselves swirl and swell like an angry ocean.
Thriving against façades the ignorant sea
Souses our public baths, statues, waste ground:
Archaic earth-shaker, fresh enemy
(‘The tables of exchange being overturned’);
Drowns Babel in upheaval and display;
Unswerving, as were the admired multitudes
Silenced from time to time under its sway.
By all means let us appease the terse gods.
15 April • The Convergence of the Twain • Thomas Hardy
The RMS Titanic was lavishly furnished, creating the ‘waste of riches’ Hardy refers to when it sank. The poem concentrates on the ‘Twain’ of the title, the ship and the iceberg, and how they came to collide (or ‘converge’).
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls – grotesque, slimed, dumb,
indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: ‘What does this vaingloriousness down here?’ …
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her – so gaily great –
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later h
istory,
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said ‘Now!’ And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
16 April • Will Ye No Come Back Again? • Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne
The Battle of Culloden was fought on 16 April 1746, between a British Loyalist army under the command of the Duke of Cumberland and a Scottish Jacobite force under the command of Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’). Stuart was the ‘Young Pretender’ to the British crown, which had been seized from his grandfather King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This battle, the last one fought on British soil, ended Stuart’s efforts to take up the throne of Great Britain and forced him to flee Scotland, never to return. This poem laments his failed attempt and calls for his return to Scotland.
Will ye no come back again?
Will ye no come back again?
Better lo’ed ye canne be,
Will ye no come back again?
Bonnie Charlie’s now awa,
Safely owre the friendly main;
Mony a heart will break in twa,
Should he ne’er come back again.
Ye trusted in your Hieland men,
They trusted you, dear Charlie;
They kent you hiding in the glen,
Your cleadin’ was but barely.
English bribes were a’ in vain;
An’ e’en tho’ puirer we may be,
Siller canna buy the heart
That beats aye for thine and thee.
We watched thee in the gloaming hour,
We watched thee in the morning grey;
Tho’ thirty thousand pounds they’d gie,
Oh there is nane that wad betray.
Sweet’s the laverock’s note and lang,
Lilting wildly up the glen;
But aye to me he sings ae sang,–
Will ye no come back again?
Will ye no come back again?
Will ye no come back again?
Better lo’ed ye canne be,
Will ye no come back again?
16 April • The Skye Boat Song • Sir Harold Boulton
Written in the late nineteenth century and set to music many times since, ‘The Skye Boat Song’ paints a romantic image of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s flight to the island of Skye after his army’s defeat at Culloden. Although vanquished that day, the poem ends on a rousing patriotic note – one far more assured than the rhetorical question which concludes the previous entry.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing
Onward, the sailors cry!
Carry the lad that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Loud the winds cry, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air.
Baffled our foes stand by the shore.
Follow they will not dare
Many’s the lad fought on that day
Well the claymore could wield,
When the night came silently lay
Dead on Culloden’s field.
Burned are our homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men.
Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath
Scotland will rise again!
17 April • from The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot remains one of the most important English poets in history. He’s also probably one of the most difficult to understand, with much of his poetry filled with unusual words, complex references and even foreign languages! He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. His great poem The Waste Land has many famous lines – not least its opening characterization of the month of April, as well as the enigmatic line: ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’.
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
– Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
17 April • Waste Land Limericks • Wendy Cope
Eliot’s The Waste Land has inspired many works of literature since it was published, but perhaps none as directly as these poems by Wendy Cope. The limerick is a playful form, associated with naughty humour and poking fun at people. In these poems, Cope plays around with Eliot’s weighty words, creating a completely different type of poetic experience.
I
In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyantes distress me,
Commuters depress me –
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.
II
She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions –
Bad as Albert and Lil – what a pair!
III
The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep –
A typist is laid,
A record is played –
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.
IV
A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business – the lot,
Which is no surprise,
Since he’d met his demise
And been left in the ocean to rot.
V
No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
Then thunder, a shower of quotes
From the Sanskrit and Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you’ll make sense of the notes.
18 April • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud • William Wordsworth
This poem opens with a multitude of natural images: clouds, vales, hills and – most famously – daffodils. While Wordsw
orth writes at length on the sight of the daffodils, he never mentions their smell. This is unsurprising, as Wordsworth actually suffered from anosmia and had barely any sense of smell at all!
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
18 April • Paul Revere’s Ride • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On the eve of the American Revolutionary War (or what we Brits call the American War of Independence), 18 April 1775, Paul Revere rode from Boston to Lexington to warn rebel leaders that British soldiers were on the march and coming to arrest them. His dramatic ride is immortalized here by the American poet, Henry Longfellow.
