Two Short Poetry Finds On A Lovely Rainy Friday

Ahh Friday. And what a beautiful Friday it’s been. It was gray, it misted and rained all day and I can’t wait to sleep tonight so I can hear that little pitter patter against my window. While bright sunny days are nice, my birthplace has instilled in me an appreciation for the rain that makes things grow and how wonderful it is to nap or sleep to that sound I love so well.
Poets have long used the changing of seasons as inspiration for poems but I had no idea that the man who created Winnie The Pooh could summarize how I feel about spring so succinctly and in his own creative and playful way:

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."

And lest we become too whimsical on this lovely rainy day, I’d like to celebrate a lesser known writer and poet who is noted for coming up with the English variation of the French 'Rondeau', Algemon Charles Swinburne. His lyric poem Atalanta in Calydon is the reason I started this blog. I didn’t read this in high school, it was not required reading in AP English or in any college courses I had, but I love finding new things for the first time. Here is the wonderful Chorus of the poem, also celebrating the coming of spring.
 
Atalanta in Calydon
by Algemon Charles Swinburne

CHORUS.

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous

Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,

The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,

With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;

Bind on thy sandals, Oh thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;

For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?

Oh that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!

For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;

For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.