THE SEASONS Another animal slaking its summer thirst was thus briefly described by James Thompson in his “The Seasons” of 1727; in these lines from:SUMMEROft in this season too the horse, provok’d, While his big sinews, full of spirits, swell, Trembling with vigour, in the heat of blood, Springs the high fence; and, o’er the […]
Author: Peter Wood
July 5 D H Lawrence
With Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner” in mind, the strange fascination exerted by a snake is tellingly recounted in D.H. Lawrence’s poem of that name, written from Taormina in Sicily. SNAKE A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there.In the deep, strange-scented shade of […]
July 4 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER Frost’s “bright green snake” takes us back to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with its water-snakes “blue, glossy green, and velvet black”. This ancient mariner, or old navigator, as he was originally called, had incurred the deadly hostility of the spirits of Nature by his wanton killing […]
July 3 Robert Frost
MOWING This poem is still protected by copyright. There was never a sound beside the wood but one, Read the rest of this poem. Next: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
July 2 W J Turner
THE LION Strange spirit with inky hair, This poem is copyright until 19th November 2016. The published poem was not found. Next: “Mowing” Robert Frost
July 1 Edmund Spenser
THE FAERIE QUEENE Then came hot July, boiling like to fire, That all his garments he had cast away; Upon a lion raging yet with ire He boldly rode, and made him to obey: It was the beast that whilom did foray The Nemaean forest, till the Amphitrionide Him slew, and with his hide did […]
June Poems Index
Title/From Begins Poet Faerie Queene And after her came jolly June arrayed Edmund Spenser Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard The curfew tolls the knell of parting day Thomas Gray The Deserted Village Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, Oliver Goldsmith Forefathers Here they went with smock and crook Edmund Blunden Heaven Fish (fly […]
June 8 James Elroy Flecker
Thus new generations of poets, by their original use of language and its rhythms, re-create old themes. James Elroy Flecker, who died in l9l5, carries the hope of this progression into the future in his lines “To a Poet a thousand Years Hence”: he trusts that, in spite of all the developments of technology, poets […]
June 7 Dylan Thomas
At once more modern, published actually in 1952, and with the immediacy of a child’s joyful exhilaration in a rural setting, imaginatively realised, is Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill”, a striking evocation of the freshness and wonder of a child’s vision of his earthly paradise: Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs […]
June 6 Edward Thomas
A contemporary and acquaintance of Brooke, one of the group attracted and encouraged by Sir Edward Marsh, who published their poems in his biennial anthologies was Edward Thomas, who here hauntingly renders June’s midday stillness in his poem, Adlestrop. Yes. I remember Adlestrop – The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up […]