December / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

December

Last, for December, houses on the plain,
    Ground-floors to live in, logs heaped mountain-high,
    And carpets stretched, and newest games to try,
And torches lit, and gifts from man to man
(Your host, a drunkard and a Catalan);
    And whole dead pigs, and cunning cooks to ply
    Each throat with tit-bits that shall satisfy;
And wine-butts of Saint Galganus' brave span.
And be your coats well-lined and tightly bound,
    And wrap yourselves in cloaks of strength and weight,
        With gallant hoods to put your faces through.
And make your game of abject vagabond
    Abandoned miserable reprobate
    Misers; don't let them have a chance with you.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[January]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Joseph Nash, Christmas revels at Haddon Hall, from 

Mansions of England in the Olden Time, 1839. Wikimedia Commons.

November / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

November

Let baths and wine-butts be November's due,
    With thirty mule-loads of broad gold-pieces;
    And canopy with silk the streets that freeze;
And keep your drink-horns steadily in view.
Let every trader have his gain of you:
    Clareta shall your lamps and torches send, —
    Caeta, citron-candies without end; 

And each shall drink, and help his neighbour to.
And let the cold be great, and the fire grand:
    And still for fowls, and pastries sweetly wrought,
        For hares and kids, for roast and boil'd, be sure
You always have your appetites at hand;
    And then let night howl and heaven fall, so nought
        Be miss'd that makes a man's bed-furniture.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[December]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

from Livre d'heures de la reine Yolande, 15th century. Wikimedia Commons.

October / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

October

Next, for October, to some shelter'd coign
    Flouting the winds I'll hope to find you slunk:
    Though in bird-shooting (lest all sport be sunk),
Your foot still press the turf, the horse your groin.
At night with sweethearts in the dance you'll join,
    And drink the blessed must, and get quite drunk.
    There's no such life for any human trunk;
And that's a truth that rings like golden coin!
Then, out of bed again when morning's come,
    Let your hands drench your face refreshingly,
        And take your physic roast, with flask and knife.
Sounder and snugger you shall feel at home
    Than lake-fish, river-fish, or fish at sea,
        Inheriting the cream of Christian life.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[November]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Relief of a medieval scene of three couples dancing. Wikimedia Commons.

September / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

September

And in September, O what keen delight!
    Falcons and astors, merlins, sparrowhawks:
    Decoy-birds that shall lure your game in flocks;
And hounds with bells; and gauntlets stout and tight;
Wide pouches; crossbows shooting out of sight;
    Arblasts and javelins; balls and ball-cases;
    All birds the best to fly at; moulting these,
Those rear'd by hand; with finches mean and slight;
And for their chase, all birds the best to fly;
    And each to each of you be lavish still
        In gifts; and robbery find no gainsa}ang;
And if you meet with travellers going by.
    Their purses from your purse's flow shall fill;
        And avarice be the only outcast thing.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[October]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

from the Taccuinum Sanitatis, 14th century. Wikimedia Commons.

August / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

August

For August, be your dwelling thirty towers
    Within an Alpine valley mountainous,
    Where never the sea-wind may vex your house,
But clear life separate, like a star, be yours.
There horses shall wait saddled at all hours,
    That ye may mount at morning or at eve:
    On each hand either ridge ye shall perceive,
A mile apart, which soon a good beast scours.
So alway, drawing homewards, ye shall tread
    Your valley parted by a rivulet
        Which day and night shall flow sedate and smooth.
There all through noon ye may possess the shade,
    And there your open purses shall entreat
        The best of Tuscan cheer to feed your youth.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[September]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Limbourg brothers, from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 

ca. 1402-1416 (detail), Wikimedia Commons.

July / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

July

For July, in Siena, by the willow-tree,
    I give you barrels of white Tuscan wine
    In ice far down your cellars stored supine;
And morn and eve to eat in company
Of those vast jellies dear to you and me;
    Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet,
    Boil'd capons, sovereign kids: and let their treat
Be veal and garlic, with whom these agree.
Let time slip by, till by-and-hy, all day;
    And never swelter through the heat at all,
But move at ease at home, sound, cool, and gay;
    And wear sweet-colour'd robes that lightly fall;
And keep your tables set in fresh array.
    Not coaxing spleen to be your seneschal.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[August]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Limbourg brothers, from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry,.

ca. 1402-1416 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

June / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

June

In June I give you a close-wooded fell,
    With crowns of thicket coil'd about its head,
    With thirty villas twelve times turreted,
All girdling round a little citadel;
And in the midst a springhead and fair well
    With thousand conduits branch'd and shining speed,
    Wounding the garden and the tender mead,
Yet to the freshen'd grass acceptable.
And lemons, citrons, dates, and oranges,
    And all the fruits whose savour is most rare,
Shall shine within the shadow of your trees;
    And every one shall be a lover there;
Until your life, so fill'd with courtesies,
    Throughout the world be counted debonair.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[July]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Peasants picking fruit, from Une Compilation d’œuvres d’Art Médiévales Liées: 

Aux Pommes et aux Vergers, 19th century. Courtesy Orchard Notes.

May / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

May

I give you horses for your games in May,
    And all of them well trained unto the course,–
    Each docile, swift, erect, a goodly horse;
With armor on their chests, and bells at play
Between their brows, and pennons fair and gay;
    Fine nets, and housings meet for warriors,
    Emblazoned with the shields ye claim for yours;
Gules, argent, or, all dizzy at noonday.
And spears shall split, and fruit go flying up
In merry counterchange for wreaths that drop
    From balconies and casements far above;
And tender damsels with young men and youths
Shall kiss together on the cheeks and mouths
    And every day be glad with joyful love.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[June]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Medieval jousting tournament. Unknown ms., 17th century. Wikimedia Commons.

April / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

April

I give you meadow-lands in April, fair
    With over-growth of beautiful green grass;
    There among fountains the glad hours shall pass,
And pleasant ladies bring you solace there.
With steeds of Spain and ambling palfreys rare;
    Provencal songs and dances that surpass;
    And quaint French mummings; and through hollow brass
A sound of German music on the air.
And gardens ye shall have, that every one
    May lie at ease about the fragrant place;
        And each with fitting reverence shall bow down
        Unto that youth to whom I gave a crown
    Of precious jewels like to those that grace
The Babylonian Kaiser, Prestcr John.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[May]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Limbourg brothers, "April" from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 

ca. 1402-1416. Wikimedia Commons.

March / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

March

In March I give you plenteous fisheries
    Of lamprey and of salmon, eel and trout.
    Dental and dolphin, sturgeon, all the rout
Of fish in all the streams that fill the seas.
With fishermen and fishingboats at ease,
    Sail-barques and arrow-barques and galeons stout,
    To bear you, while the season lasts, far out,
And back, through spring, to any port you please.
But with fair mansions see that it be fill'd,
    With everything exactly to your mind,
        And every sort of comfortable folk.
No convent suffer there, nor priestly guild:
    Leave the mad monks to preach after their kind
        Their scanty truth, their lies beyond a joke.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[April]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

from the Taccuinum Sanitatis, 14th century. Wikimedia Commons.

October / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

October

Autumn! a touching monitress art thou!
When, like a widow, thou dost throw aside
Thy idle gauds, thy glance of conscious pride,
And, kerchief'd in dim clouds, dost meekly throw
A faded garland round thy sadden'd brow.
I love to cope thee in thy chasten'd mood,
For earnestly, yet still in tones subdued,
Thou breathest truths befitting me to know:
And all things aid thy sober teaching well;
The mournful music of the falling leaves
Goes to the heart emphatic as a knell;
And, for the reaper's song amid the sheaves,
Yon robin, on the almost leafless spray,
Pours wildly sweet his solitary lay.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[November]

Rebecca Hey biography

September / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

September

Now the Earth yields her strength! The teeming ground
Seems lighten'd of its curse: on every side
The hills rejoice, the valleys far and wide
Stand thick with corn, and harvest-songs resound.
The garden its rich dainties scatters round,
While lane and copse, by Nature only till'd,
An ample store of humbler fruitage yield,
Berries and nuts by Autumn suns embrown'd
But, ah! amid such visions of delight,
Those few rich tints upon the forest boughs,
Like the fine flush, so ominously bright,
Which on her victim's cheek Consumption throws,
Too truly speak of wasting and decay,
And, sighing, I pursue my woodland way.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)
from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[October]

Rebecca Hey biography

August / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

August

Oh! for the covert of some gelid cave,
Whose dank walls cradle a perennial stream,
That never flash'd to Summer's ardent beam,
But, chastely cold, might tempt in its clear wave
Some fabled nymph her fairy form to lave.
Now beauty yields to splendour, flowers to fruit:
No more "in linked sweetness" gaily shoot
Woodbine and rose from moss-grown wall, or brave
The beetling cliff, whose frowning horrors yield
To their sweet witchery. See, how broad noon,
With fervid glare, broods o'er yon sloping field,
"Now white to harvest:" yet another moon,
And then shall Plenty's copious horn be fill'd
With golden fruits from Spring's fair blossoms won.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[September]

Rebecca Hey biography

June / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

June

This is the year’s sweet prime! Methinks, like Youth,
‘Tis poetry embodied! Nay, I deem,
Delightsome June! that Fancy’s brightest dream
Outvies not thy fair beauty; nay in sooth,
For once she need but borrow hues from Truth
To picture thee. Now yield we every sense
To the sweet season’s genial influence,
And banish from our bosoms care and ruth.
Ask we for fragrance? lo! each little flower
Yields to our scarce-breathed wish its incense sweet;
For music? hie we to the glade and bower,
There the blithe birds shall give us welcome meet;
For beauty? deck’d in all its living power,
Earth lays her brightest trophies at our feet.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)
from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[July]

Rebecca Hey biography

May / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

May

The clouds "have wept their fill" the whole night long,
And what a change is wrought! But yesterday,
We look'd around, and scarce could deem that May,
The poet's theme,— the month of flowers and song,—
Could do her own sweet lineaments such wrong
As to frown on us like a very shrew:
To-day, we feel what poets sing is true;
Like them, we hail her reign, and wish it long.
See, how each budding spray, each floweret fair
Retains the liquid treasure! how the trees,
Lest summer should o'ertake them unaware,
Haste to unfold their leaflets to the breeze;
While in the orchard every moss-grown stem,
And sapling shoot, a thousand blossoms gem!

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[June]

Rebecca Hey biography

April / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

April

Capricious April! when we fain would find
A fitting emblem for inconstancy,
Thy changeful moods such emblem well supply;
For thy wild sallies sure no laws can bind,
No counsel tame. One moment, and the wind
Brings storms of sleet and "blossom-bruising hail;"
The next, not Summer breathes a softer gale,
Or looks upon us with a glance more kind.
And lo! to greet thee in thy alter'd mood,
Glad Nature hastes her fairest wreaths to bring,
Blithe daisy, nodding cowslip, and each bud
That owes allegiance to the early Spring.
May such sweet wooing chase thy frowns away,
And be thy smile as constant as 'tis gay!

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)
from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[May]

Rebecca Hey biography

March / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

March

Could sullen Winter, in his mid career,
Call from his magazine of storm and cloud
A ruder gale than this? How shrill, how loud,
Its angry dissonance assails the ear!
Where be those tokens now which late did cheer
The trusting heart with hopes that Spring was nigh?
Ah! as I gaze around, earth, sea, and sky,
In mournful cadence, seem to answer "Where?"
Yet wait we patiently a little while —
The boon for which we sigh is but delay'd;
So sure as Nature's summer charms did fade
At Autumn's touch, so sure at Spring's sweet smile
Shall trees again bud forth, and flowers unfold,
"And all be vernal rapture as of old."

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[April]

Rebecca Hey bibliography

July / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

July 

Gone are Spring's graces! mute her melodies!
Yet in their place what Summer can bestow,
Freely she yields; she tunes the river's flow
To gentlest music,— fills with sweets the breeze,—
Gives the last flush of leafage to the trees,—
Flowers to Earth's nursing bosom,— to the sky
Brightness oppressive from intensity,—
And calms, with halcyon wing, the azure seas.
Such are her spells!— yet I look back on Spring
(As middle age delights on youth to pore)
With feelings mournful, but unmurmuring.
I ever loved the bud more than the flower
And hope than full enjoyment: thence I cling
Alike to life's and nature's budding hour.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[August]

Rebecca Hey bibliography

February / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

February

In February I give you gallant sport
    Of harts and hinds and great wild boars; and all
    Your company good foresters and tall,
With buskins strong, with jerkins close and short;
And in your leashes, hounds of brave report;
    And from your purses, plenteous money-fall,
    In very spleen of misers' starveling gall,
Who at your generous customs snarl and snort.
At dusk wend homeward, ye and all your folk
    All laden from the wilds, to your carouse,
        With merriment and songs accompanied:
And so draw wine and let the kitchen smoke;
    And so be till the first watch glorious;
        Then sound sleep to you till the day be wide.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[March]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (?1526-1569), The Hunters in the Snow, 1565. Wikimedia Commons.

February / Rebecca Hey

from The Poetical Calendar

February

Though Winter still asserts his right to reign,
He sways his sceptre now with gentler hand;
Nay, sometimes softens to a zephyr bland
The hurrying blast, which erst along the plain
Drove the skin-piercing sleet and pelting rain
In headlong rage; while, ever and anon,
He draws aside his veil of vapours dun,
That the bright sun may smile on us again.
To-day 'twould seem (so soft the west wind's sigh)
That the mild spirit of the infant Spring
Was brooding o'er the spots where hidden lie
Such early flowers as are the first to fling
On earth's green lap their wreaths of various dye —
Flowers, round whose forms sweet hopes and sweeter memories cling.

~~
Rebecca Hey (1797-1867)

from Recollections of the Lakes, and other poems, 1841

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[March]

Rebecca Hey biography