O month when they who love must love and wed!
Were one to go to worlds where May is naught,
And seek to tell the memories he had brought
From earth of thee, what were most fitly said?
I know not if the rosy showers shed
From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought
In fields, or if the robin's call be fraught
The most with thy delight. Perhaps they read
Thee best who in the ancient time did say
Thou wert the sacred month unto the old:
No blossom blooms upon thy brightest day
So subtly sweet as memories which unfold
In aged hearts which in thy sunshine lie,
To sun themselves once more before they die.
~~ Helen Hunt Jackson from A Calendar of Sonnets, 1891
In my mind, the dead bird sings and all things lost pass from its beak. - Karen Tellefson, 2007
“And all things lost pass from its beak”
(in song, I hope – if real, a mess
would be on table, floor, and dress,
to clean up which might take a week) –
a friendly tune when one feels weak.
Though to that song mine can't compare,
a singing bird in bush or air
is worth four dead ones in the mind.
Let’s take a walk outside to find
the joy of birdsong, everywhere.
~~ George J. Dance, 2007 from Doggerel, and other doggerel, 2015
[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]
What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O 'tis the ravish'd nightingale.
Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu! she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song! Who is't now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat
Poor robin redbreast tunes his note!
Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing
Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!
Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!
John Lyly from Campaspe, 1584
[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
They tell us of an Indian tree
Which howsoe'er the sun and sky
May tempt its boughs to wander free,
And shoot and blossom, wide and high,
Far better loves to bend its arms
Downward again to that dear earth
From which the life that fills and warms
Its grateful being, first had birth.
'Tis thus, though wooed by flattering friends,
And fed with fame (if fame it be),
This heart, my own dear mother, bends,
With love's true instinct, back to thee!
Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing –
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay –
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet –
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet Spring!
~~ Thomas Nashe fromSummer's Last Will and Testament, 1600.
She wears sunlight in her hair
And violets in her eyes
And her cheeks are the petals of a rose.
She bears Love on her arm
And lilies are her feet,
And they carry Life wherever she goes.
There are graces on her lips
And rainbows on her robes
And her wreath is the coronet of May.
She is Fairy Queen of earth -
The wand at her heart
Is a Bud from the Triune Bouquet.
She is Mother, Queen, and Maid,
And God is her Child,
And her Courts are the meadows where They play
Forever and for aye.
She is Mary full of grace.
She is Queen of Eternal May.
May! queen of blossoms,
And fulfilling flowers,
With what pretty music
Shall we charm the hours?
Wilt thou have pipe and reed,
Blown in the open mead?
Or to the lute give heed
In the green bowers?
Thou hast no need of us,
Or pipe or wire;
Thou hast the golden bee
Ripen'd with fire;
And many thousand more
Songsters, that thee adore,
Filling earth's grassy floor
With new desire.
Thou hast thy mighty herds,
Tame and free-livers;
Doubt not, thy music too
In the deep rivers;
And the whole plumy flight
Warbling the day and night —
Up at the gates of light,
See, the lark quivers!
~~ Edward Thurlow (1781-1829)
from theOxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, 1919