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.

An April Interlude – 1917 / Bernard Freeman Trotter

An April Interlude – 1917

April snow agleam in the stubble,
     Melting to brown on the new-ploughed fields,
April sunshine, and swift cloud-shadows
     Racing to spy what the season yields
Over the hills and far away:
Heigh! and ho! for an April day!
     Hoofs on the highroad: Ride—tr-r—ot!
     Spring's in the wind, and war's forgot,
As we go riding through Picardy.

Up by a wood where a brown hawk hovers,
     Down through a village with white-washed walls,
A wooden bridge and a mill-wheel turning,
     And a little stream that sports and brawls
Into the valley and far away:
Heigh! and ho! for an April day!
     Children and old men stop to stare 
     At the clattering horsemen from Angleterre,
As we go riding through Picardy.

On by the unkempt hedges, budding,
     On by the Chateau gates flung wide.
Where is the man who should trim the garden?
Where are the youths of this country-side?—
Over the hills and far away
Is war, red war, this April day.
     So for the moment we pay our debt 
     To the cause on which our faith is set,
As we go riding through Picardy.

Then the hiss of the spurting gravel,
     Then the tang of the wind on the face,
Then the splash of the hoof-deep puddle,
     Spirit of April setting the pace
Over the hills and far away:
Heigh! and ho! for an April day!
     Heigh! for a ringing: Ride—tr-r—ot!
     Ho!—of war we've never a thought
As we go riding through Picardy.

~~
Bernard Freeman Trotter (1890-1917), 1917
from A Canadian Twilight, 1917 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Bernard Freeman Trotter biography

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening / Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

~~
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
from New Hampshire, 1923

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

Robert Frost biography