I didn't realise that you wrote poetry. I didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry

Say what you will about Satan, he's no dummy.

I think I'm right about this, but am not sure.

He had no place in my family's place of worship. I never once heard mention of the Prince of Darkness in church school, confirmation class or even a sermon. This could have something to do with having been raised Anglican.

I am not sure.

My early reading on Satan was extremely limited. It began in October 1974 with 'The Ecchorcist,' MAD magazine's parody of The Exorcist, continued with Joy Carroll's horror romance Satan's Bell (1976), and more or less ended with novelizations of the films The Omen (1976) and Damien:The Omen II (1978).

Since beginning the exploration that is the Dusty Bookcase, I've learned a bit more about Beelzebub through American expat Jules-Paul Tardivel. He believed novels to be "weapons forged by Satan himself for the destruction of mankind," but seized one of "the enemy's war machines" in writing Pour la patrie (1895). Set in the far off future of 1945, the devil is very much present and very much focussed in destroying Quebec as the last bastion of Catholicism.

No one I've read far had more to say about Satan and what he's up to than the late evangelist John Wesley White – author of Re-entry (1970), The Man from Krypton (1978), Arming for Armageddon (1983), and Thinking the Unthinkable (1992) – though I'm not sure how much he can be believed. I very much doubt that this song is intended to bring the listener to love Satan:

I may be wrong.

From everything I've read, Satan is cunning, creative, devious, and extremely intelligent. What he isn't is a good poet.

I can say this with certainty having browsed Michelle Remembers, the 1980 bestseller credited with providing the spark for the Satanic Panic. I'm planning on writing about it later this year, but for now, this being the first day of National Poetry Month, I thought it might be appropriate to share one of the many samples of Satan's verse recorded in the book by authors Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder:

            If you say one word I say to you,
            You'll say it all until it's through.
            You'll run out of time, run out of space,
            Run at the mouth all over the place.
            You can only go inside your head,
            And if you go there, then you're dead.

            So you see, I've turned it inside out;

            I've turned you around, turned you about,

            You always come back to me,

            The only way out is to see through me.

            The more goes out, the more comes in,

            You'll start to end when you begin.

So begins a theological debate. Is there something lacking in the Prince of Darkness – a heart, perhaps – that prevents him from being anything other than a rotten poet or is his verse intentionally bad so as to bring hell on Earth?

Frankly, I'm beginning to have doubts that Satan composed any of the poems in Michelle Remembers.

My thanks to fellow CanLit scholar Brad Middleton, who generously donated two copies of Michelle Remembers to The Dusty Bookcase.

Related posts:

Ontario Gothic Romance (with a scent of Brut)
The Strange Satanic Canada of a Future Past

Come, Come, Come - Nuclear Bomb

Same Old Same Old about Armageddon
The Oxford PhD Rambles On
Man of Faith, Man of Steel

Songs for Sunday Suggested by John Wesley White
Immoral Music for a Monday Morning

Fair Canada: 'Here many nations dwell...'

'Fair Canada' is the first of six patriotic pieces featured in poet/publisher John Imrie's Sacred Songs, Sonnets, and Miscellaneous Poems (Toronto: Imrie & Graham, 1886).

It's sure to raise the ire of Ezra Levant, but I quite like it.

Best wishes to all on this Canada Day!

Related posts:

'We first saw light in Canada...'

'God Guide Thee Canada'

Laura Salverson's 'For Canada' for Canada Day

'Canada to England, July 1st 1917' by Horace Bray

'O Canada! beloved native land...'
'O Canada! our native land thou art!'
Patriotic Verse from the Garden of a Girl's Dreams
A 123-Year-Old Poem for Canada Day

Two Hurrahs for the New Dominion

Charles G.D. Roberts' Dominion Day Collect
Marjorie Pickthall's Canadian Hymn

Verse From the First of Dominion Poetesses

Canada's First Telefome Pome?

These past few weeks have been remarkably busy, which explains how it is that I've read and reviewed just one old, forgotten book this month. Sadly, that volume is John Wesley White's The Man From Krypton.

Heaven help me.

And yet somehow, despite it all, I found time yesterday to thumb through Sacred Songs, Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems, an 1886 collection by John Imrie (1836-1903).

I wonder what the poet, a staunch Presbyterian, might've made of White's interpretation and misrepresentation of the Holy Bible and Superman: The Movie. I expect he would have been mystified. Imrie died in Toronto three years before the first motion picture was screened in that city, thirty-eight years before Action Comics #1, and long before televangelists took to the air.

John Imrie was obviously of a very different time, as reflected in his Sacred Songs, etc. Amongst the 210 pages – referencing orphan boys, newspaper boys, Sunday school teachers, and the Knights of Labour – is this unusual and unexpected verse. It's not brilliant, but it is delightful. To think that when 'A Kiss Through the Telephone' was published, Bell's invention had been available commercially just six years.

Enjoy!

A Bonus (for the musically inclined):

Related post:

Man of Faith, Man of Steel

'Juin' par William Chapman

Verse for the day and month by son of Saint-François-de-Beauce William Chapman from Les fleurs de givre (Paris: Éditions de la Revue des poètes, 1912).

JUIN

Très tard le soleil sombre à l’horizon fumant,

Qui garde dans la nuit ses luisantes traînées.

Le fécond Prairial sous un clair firmament

Prodigue la splendeur des plus longues journées.

Une flamme de vie emplit l’immensité.

Le bleu de l’eau miroite... Adieu la nostalgie!

L’Été s’épanouit dans toute sa beauté,

Dans toute sa verdeur et toute sa magie.

Des vagues de lumière inondent les halliers;

Les oiseaux de leurs chants enivrent les bocages,

Et, gais et turbulents comme eux, les écoliers

— Les vacances ont lui — s’évadent de leurs cages.

Sur les arbres, les fleurs, les ondes, les sillons,

Partout nous entendons vibrer l’âme des choses...

Nous voyons par milliers éclore papillons,

Anémones et lis, trèfles, muguets et roses.

Et l’écureuil criard et le bouvreuil siffleur

De nos vastes forêts font tressaillir les dômes...

Les pruniers, les sureaux, les pommiers, sont en fleur,

Et nul mois canadien ne verse autant d’aromes.

Des souffles caressants frangent nos grandes eaux.

Un invisible encens flotte sur chaque grève;

Et, tels les pins, les foins, les mousses, les roseaux,

Nous sentons en nous plus de chaleur, plus de sève.

Nous aimons mieux nos bois, nos champs; nous aimons mieux

Nos pères, dont le culte à nos foyers persiste...

Et dans l’air embaumé vibre l’écho joyeux

Des chants et des vivats de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

Bonne fête!

Related posts:

'La Fête nationale' par Léon Lorrain

Debout, Canadiens-français!

Acerbic Sait-Jean-Baptiste Verse
'Hommage' pour la Fête

Root Beer for a Sober Fête de la St-Jean Baptiste

A Highly Inappropriate St-Jean-Baptiste Advert

Burpee's Bad 'St. John the Baptist': Truly Criminal
Pour la fête de St-Jean-Baptiste
Celebrating la Fête in 19th-Century Massachusetts
La Fête: Il y'a 100 ans

Canadian Womanhood on Parade!

'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!'

A Song for la Fête de la St-Jean 

Encore!

'The Dying Year' by S. Frances Harrison

THE DYING YEAR

               The old year dies! Of this be sure,

                     The old leaves rot beneath the snow.

                     The old skies falter from the blow

               Dealt by the heavens that shall endure

                     When sky and leaf together go.

               And some are glad and some are grieved.

                     Much as when some poor mortal dies;

                     The first sensation of surprise

               Is lost in sobs of his bereaved.

                     Or cold relief with dry-dust eyes,

               That view his coffin absently, 

                     And wonder first how much it cost,

                     And next, how came his fortune lost,

               And how will live his family.

                     And how he looked when he was crost.

               But tears—no, no—they only surge

                     From those who knew him. They were few;

                     He had his faults; he seldom knew

               The thing to say, condemn, or urge;

                     Tis better he has gone from view.

               So neither do we weep—God knows,

                     We have but little time for tears!

                     A time for hopes, a time for fears,

               A time for strife, a time for woes

                     We have—but hardly time for tears.

               O it were good, and it were sweet.

                     If we might weep our fill somewhere,

                     In other world, in purer air,

               Perhaps in heaven's golden street,

                     Perhaps upon its crystal stair!

               For "power and leave to weep" shall be

                     The golden city's legend dear;

                     Though wiped away be every tear.

               First for a season shall flow free

                     The floods that leave the vision clear!

               So if we could we would, Old Year,

                     Conjure a tear up when you go,

                     And pace in solemn order slow

               Behind your gray and cloud -borne bier,

                     Draped with the wan and fluttering snow.

               Yet what is it, this year we miss?

                     An arbitrary thing, a mark;

                     A rapid writing in the dark;

               Dead wire, that with a futile hiss

                     Strikes back no single answering spark.

               There is no year, we dream and say,

                     Again, no year, we say and dream,

                     And dumbly note the frozen stream,

               And note the bird on barren spray.

                     And note the cold, though bright sunbeam.

               We quarrel with the times and hours,

                     The year should end—we say—when come

                     The last long rolls of March's drum.

               And too—we say—with grass and flowers

                     Should rise the New Year, like to some

               Gay antique goddess, ever young,

                     With pallid shoulders touched with rose,

                     Firm waist that mystic zones enclose,

               White feet from violets shyly sprung.

                     Her raiment—that the high gods chose.

               And yet the poet, born to preach

                     With yearning for his human kind,

                     His verse but sermon undefined,

               Will fail in what he means to teach,

                     If he proclaim not, high designed,

               The Old Year dies! It is enough!

                     And he has won, for eyes grow dim

                     As passeth slow his pageant grim,

               And many a hand both fair and rough

                     Shall wipe away a tear for him—

               For him, and for the wasted hours,

                     The sinful days, the moments weak.

                     The words we did or did not speak,

              The weeds that crowded out our flowers,

                    The blessings that we did not seek.

—From S. Frances Harrison's Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891)

'December' by S. Frances Harrison

An old poem for the New Month by daughter of Toronto Susie Frances Harrison (née Riley; a/k/a Seranus). This version comes from her second collection, Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891).

DECEMBER

I long for a noble mood. I long to rise,

Like those large rolling clouds of ashen pink

That deepen into purple, over strife

And small mechanic doings. How superb

That landscape in the sky to which I walk,

And gain at will a spacious colour-world,

In which my finer self may feel no fear!

The distance far between that goal and me

Seems lightly bridged; breathless, I win that goal—

The shores of purple and the seas of gold.

Below, how flat the still small earth—a sphere

That only the leaden soul takes solace in!

The long pine stretches, barred in sombre black,

Cross at right-angles fields that are gray with snow—

Not white, but gray, for all the colours is here,

Colour—a new sacrament—melted gems,

The hearts of all water-lilies, the tips of their wings—

Young angels', plumed in topaz, garnet, rose—

The dazzling diamond white, the white of pearl.

How poor a place the little dark world appears,

Seen from this gold-cloud region, basoned in fire!

Only a step away, and nothing is seen

Of the homes, huts, churches, palaces it bears

Upon its dry brown bosom. There remains

But the masterful violet sea, that angrily

This moment somewhere gnashes its yellow teeth

Against a lonely reef. What's most like God

In the universe, if not this same strong sea,

Encircling, clasping, bearing up the world,

Blessing it with soft caresses, then, for faults,

Chiding in God-like surges of wrath and storm?

But the ocean of cloud is placid, and the shores,

Rolled up in their amethyst bulk towards the stars,

Fade noiselessly from pearl to purple dark.

The shades fall even here. Here—not exempt

From death and darkness even these shining airs—

The night comes swifter on than when on earth.

The fringes of faintest azure, where the bars

Of paler cloud are fading into gray,

Are dulled and blotted out. Opaque has grown

The molten in one moment; fleecy pale

And ghastly all the purple lonely then,

And awed to horror of those glacial peaks,

I bridge the vaporous barrier once again,

And tread the despised earth. Then how too dear

Doth the rude, common light of earth appear—

That of a street lamp, burning far, but clear!

The sign of human life, of human love,

Of habitation sweet, of common joys

And common plans, though precious, yet not prized,

Till in a moment's fancy I had lost them.

Isabel Ecclestone MacKay's Cold, Colourless, Bitter, Empty, Lonely, Dreary November

An old poem for the New Month by daughter of Woodstock, Ontario Isabel Ecclestone MacKay. This one comes from Between the Lights, her 1904 collection published by William Briggs.

Related posts:

Virna Sheard Sees November as a Hooded Friar

Stringer's 'The Song-Sparrow in November'
Archibald Lampman's 'In November'
'November the First' by the Master of All Poets

Edna Jaques' Creeping October

For the new month, 'October' by Poet Laureate of the Home Edna Jaques. This version is taken from her 1946 Thomas Allen collection Back-Door Neighbors.

Related posts:
Archibald Lampman's 'In October' in October

'October in War Time'

J is for Jaques, Poet Laureate of the Home

Edna Jaques' Award-Winning Thanksgiving Verse

'In Flanders Now' by Edna Jaques
'Old Lady Christmas Shopping' by Edna Jaques
'A Mother at Christmas' by Edna Jaques
A Poet Laureate's 'Prayer for the New Year'

H.C. Mason Votes Twice for September

A celebration of September from Harold Campbell "Hal" Mason's Three Things Only... (Toronto: Thomas Nelson, 1953). Much cheerier than his 'March, 1918' and 'Easter, 1942'.

SEPTEMBER

                  Let others sing of May and June —

                      To me it doth appear

                  September is the finest month

                      Of all the rolling year.

                  September days are warm and bright

                      As children trudge to school,

                  And weary folk may sleep at night —

                      September nights are cool. 

                  She borrows from all seasons,

                      She lends upon them all,

                  Prolongs the spring and summer

                      And draws them into fall,

                  Prepares the way for winter

                      And yet delays him, too —

                  September, ah, September,

                      I vote, both hands, for you! 

                  Now by the reddening apple,

                      Now by the ripening corn,

                  By every cheerful pullet

                      That crackles in the morn,

                  By harvest safely gathered,

                      By fields no longer sere,

                  September is the finest month

                      In all the rolling year!

Related posts:

'March, 1918' by H.C. Mason

'Easter, 1942' by H.C. Mason

'September Winds' by A.M. Stephen

Agnes Maule Machar's Perfect August Day

Ah, August, month of my birth. I've always found it too hot and too humid – rarely more so than this year. In "The Passing of Père La Brosse," Agnes Maule Machar notes: 

...August nights are cool

In these north regions. Summer goes so soon!

I shouldn't complain.

"The Passing of Père La Brosse" is one of the longer poems in Miss Machar's Lays of the 'True North' and Other Canadian Poems (Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1899). "An August Morning," more typical in length, was read Saturday morning during a visit to Agnes Maule Machar Park in Gananoque, Ontario.

AN AUGUST MORNING

      In gleam of pale translucent amber woke

          The perfect August day;

      Through rose-flushed bars of pearl and amber broke

          The sunset's golden way. 

      The river seemed transfigured in its flow

          To tide of amethyst,

      Save where it rippled o'er the sands below,

          And granite boulders kissed. 

      The clouds of billowy woodland hung unstirred

          In languorous slumber deep,

      While, from its green recesses, one small bird

          Piped to its brood asleep. 

      The clustering lichens wore a tenderer tint,

          The rocks a warmer glow;

      The emerald dewdrops, in the sunbeam's glint,

          Gemmed the rich moss below. 

      Our birchen shallop idly stranded lay

          Half mirrored in the stream,

      Wild roses drooped, glassed in the tiny bay,

          Ethereal as a dream! 

      You sat upon your rock, enthroned a queen,

          As on a granite throne,

      And all that world of loveliness serene

         Held but us twain alone. 

      Nay! but we felt another presence there,

          Around, below, above;
      It breathed a poem through the fragrant air
          Its name was LOVE!

Related posts:

The Dustiest Bookcase: M is for Machar
Agnes Maule Machar's New Year's Wish (& mine)
'Easter Lilies' by Agnes Maule Machar
Atypical Easter Verse by Agnes Maule Machar

A 123-Year-Old Poem for Dominion Day

Verse by the First of Dominion Poetesses

A Thanksgiving Hymn
Miss Machar's 'The Call of Christmas - 1914'

Charles Sangster's Birthday Poem

Son of Kingston, Charles Sangster was born two hundred years ago today. I can't claim to remember much of his verse, the following from The Saint Lawrence and the Saguenay, and Other Poems (Kingston: Creighton & Duff, 1856) excepted. It's thought to have been written in 1855 for Mary Kilborn, whom the poet married in 1856... and who died in 1858. 

MARY'S TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY

                         One of the Fourscore years, Mary,

                            Has passed like a dream away,

                         A dream of laughter and tears, Mary,

                            Like a showery summer's day,

                                 With its rainbow bright,

                                 In the warm twilight,

                            Fair pledge of a happier day, Mary,

                            God's pledge of a happier day.

                        Swiftly the seasons roll, Mary,

                           Like the waves o'er a mighty sea,

                        Searching the depths of the soul, Mary,

                           With their power and mystery.

                                Every hour that flies,

                                Tells in distant skies

                           The words that it heard from thee, Mary,

                           The deeds that are done by thee.

                       See that the tale be pure, Mary,

                          That the Hours may have to tell;

                       Goodness and Truth, we are sure, Mary,

                          Heav'n loveth exceeding well;

                               And the beauteous mind

                               Where Truth is shrined,

                          Glows bright as a sunny dell, Mary,

                          Glows bright as a sunny dell.

                       More of the Fourscore years, Mary,

                          Must pass like the first away,

                       Each, as its turn appears, Mary,

                          May not be a summer's day;

                               But Hope's rainbow bright,

                               With its smile, will light

                          The close of a happier day, Mary,

                          The dawn of Eternal Day.

Verse by the First of Dominion Poetesses

Verse for the day by Agnes Maule Machar from Lays of the 'True North' and Other Canadian Poems (Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1899). No less a critic than Edwin Arnold considered Miss Machar "the first of Dominion poetesses." See if you don't agree.

CANADA'S BIRTHDAY

With feu de joie, and merry bells, and cannons' thundering peal,

And pennons fluttering on the breeze, and serried rows of steel,

We greet once more the birthday morn of our Canadian land,

Wide stretching from Atlantic shore to far Pacific strand,

With sweeping rivers, ocean lakes, and prairies wide and free,

And waterfalls and forests dim, and mountains by the sea;

A country on whose birth there smiled the genius of romance,

Above whose cradle brave hands hung the lilied flag of France;

Whose infancy was grimly nursed in peril, pain and woe,

When gallant hearts found early graves beneath Canadian snow;

When savage raid and ambuscade and famine's sore distress

Combined their strength in vain to crush the gallant French noblesse;

While her dim, trackless forests lured again and yet again

From silken courts of sunny France her flower, the brave Champlain;

And now her proud traditions guard four ancient rolls of fame,

Crécy's and Flodden's combatants for ancestors we claim!

Past feud and battle buried far behind the peaceful years,

While Gaul and Celt and Saxon turn to pruning-hooks their spears;

Four nations welded into one with long, historic past,

Have found in these our western wilds one common life at last.

Through the young giant's mighty limbs that reach from sea to sea

There runs a throb of conscious life, of waking energy;

From Nova Scotia's misty coast to far Pacific shore

She wakes, a band of scattered homes and colonies no more,

But a young nation, with her life full beating in her breast;

A noble future in her eyes, the Britain of the West.

Hers be the generous task to fill the yet untrodden plains

With fruitful, many-sided life that courses through her veins:

The English honour, nerve and pluck, the Scotchman's faith in right,

The grace and courtesy of France, the Irish fancy bright,

The Saxon's faithful love of home and home's affections blest,

And chief of all, our holy faith, of all her treasures best!

May she, though poor in luxuries, wax rich in noble deeds,

Knowing that righteousness exalts the people that it leads.

As yet the waxen mould is soft, the opening page is fair;

It rests with those who rule us now to leave their impress there,

The stamp of true nobility, high honour, stainless truth,

The earnest quest of noble ends, the generous heart of youth;

The love of country, soaring far above all party strife,

The love of culture, art and song, the crowning grace of life,

The love of science reaching far through Nature's hidden ways,

The love and fear of Nature's God, a nation's highest praise;

So, in the long hereafter, our Canada shall be

The worthy heir of British power and British liberty,

Spreading their blessings 'neath her sway to her remotest bounds,

While with the fame of her fair name a continent resounds,

True to the high traditions of our Britain's ancient glory

Of patriots, prophets, martyrs, saints, who live in deathless story,

Strong in their liberty and truth, to shed from shore to shore

A light among the nations, till nations are no more!

Related posts:

'We first saw light in Canada...'

'God Guide Thee Canada'

Laura Salverson's 'For Canada' for Canada Day

'Canada to England, July 1st 1917' by Horace Bray

'O Canada! beloved native land...'
'O Canada! our native land thou art!'
Patriotic Verse from the Garden of a Girl's Dreams
A 123-Year-Old Poem for Canada Day

Two Hurrahs for the New Dominion

Charles G.D. Roberts' Dominion Day Collect
Marjorie Pickthall's Canadian Hymn

'La Fête nationale' par Léon Lorrain

Léon Lorrain
1855 - 1892
RIP

Verse for the day from Léon Lorrain's Les Fleurs poétiques, simples bluettes (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1890).

LA FÊTE NATIONALE

(La Saint-Jean-Baptiste)

A L'HONORABLE M. F.-G. MARCHAND

          Vingt-quatre juin! Salut! ― Ô fête solennelle!

          Apporte dans nos cœurs l'amitié fraternelle,

          Ce sentiment si beau qu'on le dit surhumain!

          Retardez votre cours, heures patriotiques!

          Laissez-nous savourer les plaisirs pacifiques

               Dont vous semez votre chemin!

          Le soleil radieux, comme un puissant génie,

          Répand à flots vermeils le jour et l'harmonie;

          Il féconde nos champs de ses subtils rayons;

          Il dispense partout dans sa course enflammée

          La vie et l'abondance; une brise embaumée

               S'élève de nos frais sillons.

          Notre libre drapeau flotte, au gré de la brise,

          Au sommet d'une tour, au clocher d'une église

          Et domine nos champs, ― resplendissants tableaux! ―

          Sous ses replis mouvants, l'enthousiaste foule

          Se rallie et se presse, ensuite se déroule

               Ondulante comme les flots!

          Tous les cœurs sont émus par la même pensée.

          Voyez se réunir cette foule empressée.

          Elle confond ensemble, en ce jour patronal,

          Au seuil du temple saint où souvent elle prie,

          L'amour du Tout-Puissant, l'amour de la patrie,

              Dans le devoir national!

II

          Du ciel où vous vivez, de ces célestes dômes,

          Esprits de nos aïeux, ô bien-aimés fantômes,

               Venez contemplez vos enfants.

          Dans le ravissement leur âme se déploie;

          Leur chère liberté, le bonheur et la joie

               Brillent sur leurs fronts triomphants!

          Voyez qu'elle sied bien à leur tête ennoblie,

          La couronne de fleurs que vous avez cueillie, ―

               La couronne de liberté!

          Ils ne l'ont pas flétri, ce lys emblématique;

          Mais ils l'ont cultivé de leur main héroïque

               Comme on cultive un fruit d'été!

Félix-Gabriel Marchand
1832 - 1900
RIP

Related posts:

Debout, Canadiens-français!

Acerbic Sait-Jean-Baptiste Verse
'Hommage' pour la Fête

Root Beer for a Sober Fête de la St-Jean Baptiste

A Highly Inappropriate St-Jean-Baptiste Advert

Burpee's Bad 'St. John the Baptist': Truly Criminal
Pour la fête de St-Jean-Baptiste
Celebrating la Fête in 19th-Century Massachusetts
La Fête: Il y'a 100 ans

Canadian Womanhood on Parade!

'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!'

A Song for la Fête de la St-Jean 

Encore!

Is This the Dominion's Only Goose Girl Poem?

Now that National Poetry Month is over, a poem for May by Virna Sheard, pride of Cobourg, Ontario, from Candle Flame (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926).

It follows verse in which she rightly praises postmen.

ALL ON A MAY MORNING

I saw a lovely lady walk along a leafy lane,

When primroses were blowing and the cuckoo sang again;

She wore a ruffled gown of pink, a hat of rosy hues,

And twinkling silver buckles on her little high-heeled shoes;

     Most daintily she carried a tall tasselled cane,

     While a small beribboned poodle came following in her train.

Then said I to the morning sun: "O do not let her pass!

A more bewitching, beauteous maid ne'er owned a looking-glass!

And if she turns in any gate, and goes I know not where,

It's probable I'll never see another maid as fair!

     Without the faintest knowledge of her charming name, alas!

     I sallied forth to meet her across the young green grass.

My hand upon my fluttering heart, I bowed extremely low,

And said: "A thousand pardons, but my way I do not know,

For since I chanced to see you from yon blossoming orchard tree,

The West is East, the South is North,—and all the same to me!

     And I have not any notion which way the four winds blow,

     Or on what highroad, up or down, t'would be the best to go!

"Of your kindness pray direct me to the left—or to the right;—

(You really should—because 'tis you have put my wits to flight,)

And I'd be quite madly joyful, and grateful this sweet day

If it should hap, by any luck, that your way was my way.

     There surely never was a morn more gay and golden-bright,

     And I have not a thing to do, but walk about till night."

Alack! That shining lady in that green primrosy lane,

Turned first to whitest marble—and then turned back again!

Her cheeks flamed red with fury—and her eyes flamed black with rage,

And she looked at me as might a queen at a good-for-nothing page!

     She tossed her head, and firmly, set down the tasselled cane,

     "I do not know you Sir!" she said,—and walked on with disdain.

"Beauty altogether perfect, cannot possibly be rude,"

Said I, and went the other way—but in a chastened mood;

Nor did I start a-whistling—as on such a day one should—

Till I reached the village common where a little goose-girl stood,

     Egad! The prettiest goose-girl that I have ever viewed!

     (Her flock was one grey gosling, by a frantic dog pursued.)

But tears were falling from her eyes, her eyes of blue-bell blue;

So I said: "Come! Come! Now what's amiss? Why all of this ado?"

And she cried: "O Sir! My darling geese! Of them I am bereft!

Of all the lovely twenty-five, there's only this one left!

     What shall I do! What shall I do! Whatever shall I do!

     The huntsmen came a-riding by—and all my geese just flew!"

I could not bear to see a little maiden so forlorn,

(I noticed that her curls were just the color of ripe corn;)

"Why go along with me!" said I, "tame geese will not fly far, 

And you and I together will discover where they are!"

     So hand in hand we hunted geese that mellow May-day morn,

     And I found that little goose-girl was a rose without a thorn.

Related posts:

May Day and the Promise of May

A Poem for May Day by Gay Page

Happy May Day!

'When April Comes' by Virna Sheard

Now That April's Here, Virna Sheard's 'April'

Virna Sheard Sees November as a Hooded Friar

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 10: 'April' by Mary Morgan

For the month, the last of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

A final poem for National Poetry Month, 'April' comes from the pen of Mary Morgan, daughter of James and Catherine Morgan, niece of Montreal merchant king Henry Morgan of the Henry Morgan Company. The brief biography included in Types of Canadian Women by Henry James Morgan (no relation, I believe) suggests a life of both privilege and constraint.

cliquez pour agrandir

'April' is found in Poems and Translations (Montreal: J Theo Robinson, 1887), her first volume of verse.

APRIL

                         Thou balmy April evening,

                              I love thy beauty rare;

                         The clouds obscure the heavens,

                              A star shines here and there.

                         The breath of love is filling

                              The zephyrs as they blow;

                         The fragrance of the violet

                              Is wafted from below.

                         O for a strain of music

                              To suit the pensive hour

                         Some cadence low and tender

                              To lell its soothing power!

The poet identifies 'April' as a translation "from the German of Geibel." I'm unfamiliar with the language, but believe the original to be 'Im April' by Emanuel von Geibel:

                        Du feuchter Fruehlingsabend,

                        Wie hab' ich dich so gern!

                        Der Himmel wolkenverhangen,

                        Nur hie und da ein Stern.

                        Wie leiser Liebesodem

                        Hauchet so lau die Luft,

                        Es steiget aus allen

                        Talen Ein warmer Veilchenduft.

                        Ich moecht' ein Lied ersinnen,

                        Das diesem Abend gleich,

                        Und kann den Klang nicht finden,

                        So dunkel, mild und weich.

Am I right?

My conclusion is based on a translation provided by Google:

                         You damp spring evening,

                         How I like you so much!

                         the sky overcast,

                         Just a star here and there.

                         Like a gentle breath of love

                         breathe so lukewarm the air,

                         It rises from all valleys

                         A warm violet scent.

                         I want to think up a song

                         The same this evening

                         And can't find the sound

                         So dark, mild and soft.

Assuming I am correct, I much prefer Mary Morgan's.

How 'bout you?