Seamus Heaney

The summer classic 'Blackberry-Picking':

Late August, given heavy rain and sun 

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. 

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot 

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. 

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet 

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it 

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for 

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger 

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots 

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. 

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills 

We trekked and picked until the cans were full, 

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered 

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned 

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered 

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. 

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. 

But when the bath was filled we found a fur, 

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. 

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush 

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. 

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair 

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. 

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Book rec: adventure and gothic

The famous female writer Ann Radcliffe's [1764-1823] seminal book The Mysteries of Udolpho is an incredible, very long piece that is great to try. You get sucked in easily by her descriptive writing and the soft touches of the macabre and eerie. Of course, it was written in 1794, so you need to expect over-dramatization, over the top emotional, and antiquated gender roles. As a famous early gothic novel, there is a damsel in distress and quite a sense of fear, confusion and worry.

It's as fun as Balzac, and much more exciting. It's also very poetic, so be prepared. People have reported it can give you a chill even in the hot sun of Capri. Begin fast by starting at a random early page to just dive in quick. If you love it, you can go back and read those pages.

Here are a few quotes:

“Towards evening, they wound down precipices, black with forest of cypress, pine and cedar, into a glen so savage and secluded, that, if Solicitude ever had local habitation, this might have been "her place of dearest residence” 

“Groves of orange and lemon perfumed the air, their ripe fruit glowing among the foliage; while, sloping to the plains, extensive vineyards spread their treasures. Beyond these, woods and pastures, and mingled towns and hamlets stretched towards the sea, on whose bright surface gleamed many a distant sail; while, over the whole scene was diffused the purple glow of evening.” 

Warsan Shire

Warsan Shire is a breakout poet recently -- most infamously featured in Beyonce's Lemonade film.

One great section of her piece "Intuition" is this:

I tried to make a home out of you, but doors lead to trap doors, a stairway leads to nothing. Unknown women wander the hallways at night.

Milton and Stevenson

Milton's "Sonnet 7" 

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 

       Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! 

       My hasting days fly on with full career, 

       But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 

       That I to manhood am arriv'd so near; 

       And inward ripeness doth much less appear, 

       That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th. 

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, 

       It shall be still in strictest measure ev'n 

       To that same lot, however mean or high, 

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n: 

       All is, if I have grace to use it so 

       As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.

"Spring Carol" by Robert Louis Stevenson

WHEN loud by landside streamlets gush,
And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
With sun on the meadows
And songs in the shadows
Comes again to me
The gift of the tongues of the lea,
The gift of the tongues of meadows.

Straightway my olden heart returns
And dances with the dancing burns;
It sings with the sparrows;
To the rain and the (grimy) barrows
Sings my heart aloud -
To the silver-bellied cloud,
To the silver rainy arrows.

It bears the song of the skylark down,
And it hears the singing of the town;
And youth on the highways
And lovers in byways
Follows and sees:
And hearkens the song of the leas
And sings the songs of the highways.

So when the earth is alive with gods,
And the lusty ploughman breaks the sod,
And the grass sings in the meadows,
And the flowers smile in the shadows,
Sits my heart at ease,
Hearing the song of the leas,
Singing the songs of the meadows. 

Milne and Hopkins

'Daffodowndilly' by A.A. Milne

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet, 

She wore her greenest gown; 

She turned to the south wind 

And curtsied up and down. 

She turned to the sunlight 

And shook her yellow head, 

And whispered to her neighbour: "Winter is dead." 

'Spring' by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as spring— 
  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; 
  Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush 
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring 
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; 
  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush 
  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush 
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.   
What is all this juice and all this joy? 
  A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning 
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy, 
  Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, 
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, 
  Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

W. Carlos Williams

Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital]

I

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.  All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them:  rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

DH Lawrence

The Enkindled Spring

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration 
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.