Disasters at sea have inspired many a poem, few more chilling than Thomas Hardy’s, which embodies his own peculiar sense of fate in recording the disaster of the fourteenth of April nineteen hundred and twelve when the Titanic, on her maiden voyage to America, struck an iceberg. THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN By Thomas Hardy […]
April
April 5 An Old Ballad
Masefield knew too, our old anonymous ballads, and caught their spirit in his own songs of the sea, the disastrous sea crossing from Norway in 1290 AD of Princess Margaret on her way to Scotland in the ship of Sir Patrick Spens was recorded in an old ballad ending thus: O laith, laith were our […]
April 4 Masefield
Masefield too heard the call to adventure by land and by sea, and in his TEWKESBURY ROAD Link to poem Tewkesbury Road or even more characteristically, in his well known poem, SEA FEVER Link to poem Sea Fever Masefield was very much in the mainstream of English poetry; his Reynard the Fox and in his […]
April 2 Watson
In contrast to the lusty young man of Spenser’s personification, in William Watson’s lines April appears as a young girl, referring to the frequent periods of sunshine and showers characteristic of this month. APRIL William Watson April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears!
April 1 Spenser
From THE CALENDAR OF NATURE by Edmund Spenser The legend of Jupiter, disguised as a bull, carrying off Europa by swimming across the seas of Crete, is consonant with the freshness and activity of the season. APRILNext came fresh April, full of lustyhed, And wanton as a kid whose horne new buds Upon a bull […]