Chanson D’Aventure / C.S. Lewis

Chanson D’Aventure

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear
‘This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

‘Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

‘This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

‘This summer will not lead you round and back
To autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

‘Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
The gates of good adventure swing apart.

‘This time, this time, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.’

I said, ‘This might prove truer than a bird can know;
And yet your singing will not make it so.’

~~
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
from The Oxford Magazine, February 1938

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

C. S. Lewis biography

"What the Bird Said Early in the Year" read by Jo-Ann Dawson.

Courtesy St Mary Magdalene, Toronto - Anglican Church.

"What the Bird Said Early in the Year" is a later version of "Chanson d'Aventure" (not published in Lewis's lifetime) that is inscribed on a memorial stone to Lewis on Addison's Walk at Magdalen College, Cambridge. The variations in the versions are discussed in "Carved in Stone: What the Bird Did Not Say Early in the Year" in The Lewis Legacy Issue 75 (Winter 1998).

3 May poems / Annette Wynne

May

"Moon of Green Leaves," so
They called you long ago,
So the Indian child at play
Spoke your name, dear Month of May.


The First of May

If I could stay up late no doubt
I'd catch the buds just bursting out;
And up from every hidden root
Would jump a tiny slender shoot;
I wonder how seeds learn the way,
They always know the very day —
The pretty, happy first of May;
If I could stay up then, no doubt
I'd catch the buds just bursting out.


May Is Pretty, May Is Mild

May is pretty, May is mild,
Dances like a happy child;
Sing out, robin; spring out, flowers;
April went with all her showers,
And the world is green again;
Come out, children, to the glen,
To the meadows, to the wood,
For the earth is clean and good,
And the sky is clear and blue,
And bright May is calling you!

May is pretty. May is mild,
Dances like a happy child,
On a blessèd holiday.
Come out, children, join the play!

~~
Annette Wynne (1889-1952)

from For Days and Days: A year-round treasury of child verse, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and  the European Union]

[June]

Annette Wynne biography

Ettore Tito (1859-1941), Holiday, 1910 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

To My Mother / Christina Rossetti

    To My Mother

Harrison Weir (1824-1906),

 Flowers for Mother,  ca. 1880.

 Wikimedia Commons. 

    
    To-day's your natal day;
            Sweet flowers I bring:
    Mother, accept, I pray
            My offering.

    And may you happy live,
            And long us bless;
    Receiving as you give
            Great happiness.

~~
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
from Poems for Children, 1907

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Christina Rossetti biography

"To My Mother" read for Eternal Poems.

Holy Ghost Cement / AE Reiff

Holy Ghost Cement

Hopkins left the world unchanged.

Who else need try the ooze of oil,

shook foil, Holy Ghost brood?

We favor Herbert's command.

God's Grandeur lives or dies.

What falls between is vain.

Words to defend against bandits

vibrate around those we love.

How else guard?

Yesterday angels came to a house

that armed robbers feared,

"He guards the lives of his faithful ones,"

"Holy Father, protect them by the power

of your Name, the Name you gave me."

Up on a ladder with scaffold and boards,

with faith I am building the Name with the Word.

~~

AE Reiff, 2026

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]

AE Reiff biography

God's Grandeur / Gerard Manley Hopkins

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~~
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

 "God's Grandeur" read by Charles III. Courtesy The Royal Family..

May's featured poem

 

The Penny Blog's featured  poem for May 2026:

A Road Song in May, by Francis Sherman

[...]

O wind that bloweth from the west,

Is not this morning road the best?

— Let us go hand in hand, as free

And glad as little children be

[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011/05/road-song-in-may-francis-sherman.html

Penny's Top 20 / April 2026

    

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in April 2026:

  1.  Only the Lonely, George J. Dance

  2.  Two Tramps in Mud Time, Robert Frost

  3.  Daffodils, William Wordsworth

  4.  Easter-day, Henry Vaughan

  5.  Blossom-Time, Hazel Hall

  6.  Easter, John Freeman

  7.  Elegy, Florence Kilpatrick Mixter

  8.  March, Annette Wynne

  9.  April, Jane G. Austin

10.  Aprilian, Bliss Carman

11.  April, George J. Dance

12.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

13.  Sonnet 1977, Will Dockery

14.  April the Magician, Annette Wynne

15.  Dandelions, George Sulzbach

16.  Skating, William Wordsworth

17.  Silk Diamond, George Sulzbach

18.  Spring, Richard Chenevix Trench

19.  Metric Figure, William Carlos Williams

20. A Russian Easter, Marya Zaturenska

Source: Blogger, "Stats"