Wednesday, February 27, 2008

New England poet and daffodils


















Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;
To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,
To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold
To stand erect, full in the dazzling play
Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

Amy Lowell, who wrote this poem, was born 134 years ago in
Brookline, MA, some 15 miles south of where I teach. She's
one of my favorite American poets because she writes with
such passion and color. She comes from old New England
stock with one of the early cities named for it (Lowell, MA,
one of the major mill towns at one time). Even though this
poem is about April's sun, it describes I'm longing to see
right now. I love winter, I think snow is beautiful, and I
don't mind the cold weather. But I am more than ready for
more sun, for flowers, for spring!

2 comments:

Ruth said...

Ha! We were on the same brainwave length tonight.( I wrote my Friday Flowers post just now) Lovely poem from a poet I do not know. We are longing for daffodils!

Anonymous said...

This is such lovely and hard to believe this is the time of the year to be thinking about daffodils!