Title/From Begins Poet The Faerie Queene Then came October full of merry glee Edmund Spenser Antony and Cleopatra Come, thou monarch of the vine, William Shakespeare 17th Century Round Hey nonny, no! Men are fools that wish to die! Anonymous John Barleycorn Willie brew’d a peck o’ malt, Robert Burns The Listeners ‘Is there anybody […]
October
October 8 Percy Bysshe Shelley
A more powerful and declamatory self-identification with autumnal Nature, proper to a Romantic poet, is heard in Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”. In a note to the poem Shelley tells us that it was conceived and chiefly written in a wood skirting The Arno , near Florence, while a West wind was blowing up […]
October 7 William Shakespeare
An earlier sonnet expressing a very different emotional sympathy with the season is one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets upon the Autumn of love: That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet […]
October 6 Roy Campbell
But Spenser’s October also had his ploughing-share and coulter (that is an iron cutter in front of the share) ready for action. Roy Campbell’s striking sonnet, “The Serf” shows a ploughman at work: His naked skin clothed in the torrid mist This poem is copyright, but you can read it here. Next: The Autumn of […]
October 5 Walter de la Mare
The emotional thrill of the supernatural is refined by Walter De la Mare to a sense of mystery and an eerie strangeness in his poem. THE LISTENERS. “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; This poem is still protected by copyright, But you can read it here. Next: The Serf […]
October 4 Robert Burns
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 […]
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 […]