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.

Russia

One of the big 'must read' blogs is AnthonyWilson'sPoetry site, but I find I rarely agree with the poems he's chosen/enjoys. This one is an exception--It's the Russian [b. 1933] Yevgeny Yevtushenko's "damp white imprints..." if only because it seems to have come from Last year at Marienbad [1961], the infamous modern cinema classic:

Damp white imprints dog the feet;

snowbound trolley, snowbound street.

Her tip of glove to lip and cheek,

“Goodbye.” Go.

Deathly, into soaring snow

and stillness, as expected, go.

A turn:

    the plunge to the metro.

A blare of lights. A melting hat.

I stand, am spun in drafts, see black

take the tunnel, train, and track,

sit and wait as others sat,

touch cold marble, chill my hand

and, heavy-hearted, understand

that nothing ever really happened,

ever would, ever can.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated by Anthony Kahn, from Stolen Apples (Doubleday, 1971)

Spring Song by Robert Louis Stevenson

THE air was full of sun and birds,
The fresh air sparkled clearly.
Remembrance wakened in my heart
And I knew I loved her dearly.

The fallows and the leafless trees
And all my spirit tingled.
My earliest thought of love, and Spring's
First puff of perfume mingled.

In my still heart the thoughts awoke,
Came lone by lone together -
Say, birds and Sun and Spring, is Love
A mere affair of weather? 

Villon

Villon

Le Testament: Ballade: Pour Robert d’Estouteville

At dawn of day, when falcon shakes his wing,
Mainly from pleasure, and from noble usage,
Blackbirds too shake theirs then as they sing,
Receiving their mates, mingling their plumage,
O, as the desires it lights in me now rage,
I’d offer you, joyously, what befits the lover.
See how Love has written this very page:
Even for this end are we come together.
Doubtless, as my heart’s lady you’ll have being,
Entirely now, till death consumes my age.
Laurel, so sweet, for my cause now fighting,
Olive, so noble, removing all bitter foliage,
Reason does not wish me unused to owing,
Even as I’m to agree with this wish, forever,
Duty to you, but rather grow used to serving:
Even for this end are we come together.
And, what’s more, when sorrow’s beating
Down on me, through Fate’s incessant rage,
Your sweet glance its malice is assuaging,
Nor more or less than wind blows smoke away.
As, in your field, I plant I lose no grain,
For the harvest resembles me, and ever
God orders me to plough, and sow again:
Even for this end are we come together.
Princess, listen to this I now maintain:
That my heart and yours will not dissever:
So much I presume of you, and claim:
Even for this end are we come together.

Spring Pools by Robert Frost

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on. 

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods -
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.