The poet of John Barleycorn, Robert Burns, relates how Willie brew’d a peck o’ malt, And Rob and Allan cam to see, but perhaps his most convivial picture is that of Tam o’ Shanter cosily ensconced, before his ride through an October storm past the haunted Kirk of Alloway. But to our tale:- Ae market […]
All Poems
October 3 Anonymous
Another good one is an anonymous seventeenth century round, dating from the period of the Great Plague, which defies death by jollity: Hey nonny, no! Men are fools that wish to die! Is’t not fine to dance and sing When the bells of death do ring? Is’t not fine to swim in wine, And turn […]
October 2 William Shakespeare
Drinking songs celebrating conviviality perhaps seldom achieve poetic distinction, but Shakespeare’s from “Antony and Cleopatra” is surely an exception: Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne! In thy fats our cares be drowned, With thy grapes our hairs be crowned: Cup us, till the world go round, Cup us, till the […]
October 1 Edmund Spenser
Then came October full of merry glee; For yet his noul was totty of the must, Which he was treading in the wine-fats‘sea, And of the joyous oil, whose gentle gust Made him so frolick and so full of lust: Upon a dreadful Scorpion he did ride, The same which by Diana’s doom unjust Slew […]
November 9 Ted Hughes
And finally from fantasy to realism in Ted Hughes’ memo: NOVEMBER The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake, This poem is copyright, but you can read it here.
November 8 Walter de la Mare
The Vicar of Morwenstow’s efforts were not wholly successful as evidenced by Walter de la Mare’s dramatic monologue entitled: SAM Where Sam goes back in memory, It is to where the sea This poem is copyright, but you can read it here. Next: The Month of the Drowned Dog Ted Hughes
November 6 Edmund Spenser
Spenser’s pageant figure, as you may guess, is lurking not far away: Next was November; he full gross and fat As fed with lard, and that right well might seem; For he had been a-fatting hogs of late, That yet his brows with sweat did reek and steam, And yet the season was full sharp […]
November 5 Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” has a similar touch of the universal, going beyond the formal commemorations of the Cenotaph to find reconciliation between the actualities of war and the realities of grief: What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle […]
November 4 Wilfred Owen
Wilfrid Owen, an Infantry Officer in the Artists’ Rifles during the first World War, thus described his own writings: “My subject is War and the pity of War: the poetry is in the pity.” His poem “Futility” pities the dead fellow countrymen, and questions the purpose of life in its cosmic setting: Move him into […]
November 3 Laurence Binyon
November is the month for sad and proud remembrance of the service men who died in the World Wars. Laurence Binyon’s memorable words, so often used, are worth putting in their poetic context: For the Fallen With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of […]