Scarcely the day to take a walk

photo by Chris Cheadle


Two more March poems, this one by John Clare, many centuries ago:


"The spring is coming by many a sign;
The trays are up, the hedges broken down
That fenced the haystack, and the remnant shines
Like some old antique fragment weathered brown.
And where suns peep, in every sheltered place,
The little early buttercups unfold
A glittering star or two- till many trace
The edges of the blackthorn clumps in gold.
And then a little lamb bolts up behind
The hill, and ways his tail to meet the yoe;
And then another, sheltered from the wind,
Lies all his length as dead - and lets me go
Close by, and never stirs, but basking lies,
With legs stretched out as though he could not rise."

-  John Clare, Young Lambs

and this one, much more like the weather today, by Elizabeth Bishop, from the 20th century:



 

"It was cold and windy, scarcely the day
to take a walk on that long beach
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a lone flight of Canada geese;
and blew back the low, inaudible rollers
in upright, steely mist."



-  Elizabeth Bishop, The End of March 

 

photo by Martin Ruegner