Title/From Begins Poet Ode to Autumn Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness John Keats King Henry V For so work the honey bees William Shakespeare The Lake-Isle of Innisfree I will arise and go now W. B. Yeats Scotland Small? Scotland small? Our multiform, Hugh Macdiarmid Fairie Queene Next him September marched, eek on Edmund […]
September
September 8 Hilaire Belloc
And to end this month, as we’re already abroad, let us take a late-season holiday with Hilaire Belloc, somewhere in Spain: a place of happy memories, though the coming political troubles of the Civil War already cast their fateful shadows: TARENTELLA Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? Do you remember an Inn? This poem is still […]
September 7 D H Lawrence
Gathering swallows, ‘twittering in the skies’ , to echo Keats, are pictured by D. H. Lawrence in an Italian setting, with other air-borne creatures, in his evocative poem, BAT At evening, sitting on this terrace, When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara Departs, and the world is taken by […]
September 6 Robert Herrick
Joy in harvest was keener in olden times, when many hands by personal effort brought in the fruits of the earth, as witness “The Hook Cart’”’ or “Harvest Home”, by Robert Herrick, a seventeenth century Devonshire clergyman. It is worth remembering that in those days of glebe lands a country parson was often also a […]
September 5 Edmund Spenser
Spenser’s pageant figure reminds us that September is the month of harvest: Next him September marchéd, eek on foot, Yet was he heavy laden with the spoil Of harvest‘s riches, which he made his boot, And him enriched with bounty of the soil: In his one hand, as fit for harvest’s toil He held a […]
September 4 Hugh MacDiarmid
Regard for a native landscape frequently rises to encompass poetic emotion, as in Hugh MacDiarmid’s SCOTLAND SMALL Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small? Scotland Small is still in copyright, but can be read here. Next Poem: From the Fairie Queene by Edmund Spenser
September 3 W B Yeats
Bees too provide the peaceful music of W. B. Yeats’ earthly paradise, as imagined in his “The Lake-Isle of Innisfree”: THE LAKE-ISLE OF INNISFREE I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for […]
September 2 William Shakespeare
Bees have fascinated poets from Vergil onwards, and Shakespeare’s lines in ‘King Henry the Fifth’ come to mind. The Archbishop of Canterbury illustrates the principle of the division of labour from a hive, incidentally mistaking the queen-bee for a king: For so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act […]
September 1 John Keats
ODE TO AUTUMN The atmosphere associated with this month seems to be created perfectly in Keats’ “Ode to Autumn ” Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss‘d […]