April is National Poetry Month

Happy Birthday William Wordsworth


April is National Poetry Month, Ukiah Library Poem of the Day
The World is too much with us

written 200 years ago and still relevant:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea
;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 7, 2010

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S BIRTHDAY!
Wordsworth’s greatest poems were written during the time he
lived with Dorothy, his sister and muse.

To My Sister

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My sister! (‘tis a wish of mine)
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun….

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth:
--It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We’ll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love….

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

Poems chosen by Eliza Wingate, Ukiah Library & Donna Kerr, Willits Library

April 1st
From Eliza

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.



From Donna

SURPRISED BY JOY

Surprised by joy -impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind -
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? - That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn,
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

Poetry for April 7

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day for April 7, 2007 – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S BIRTHDAY – Go Willy!! Donna's Choice

William Wordsworth

from ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARY CHILDHOOD

The Child is Father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

I

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore; -

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more….

V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day….

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

And one by sister, Dorothy

Eliza's choice

"A Cottage in Grasmere Vale" (composed c. 1805)

Peaceful our valley, fair and green,
And beautiful her cottages,
Each in its nook, its sheltered hold,
Or guarded by its tuft of trees--

Many and beautiful they are,
But there is one that I love best,
A lowly shed in truth it is,
A brother of the rest.

Yet when I sit on rock or hill,
Down looking on the valley fair,
That cottage with its clustering trees
Summons my heart--it settles there.

Others there are whose small domain
Of fertile fields and hedgerows green
Might more entice a wanderer's mind
To wish that there his home had been.

Such wish be his! I blame him not,
My fancy is unfettered, wild!
I love that house because it is
The very mountains' child.

Fields hath it of its own, green fields,
But they are craggy, steep and bare;
Their fence is of the mountain stone
And moss and lichen flourish there.

And when the storm comes from the north
It lingers near that pastoral spot,
And piping through the mossy walls,
It seems delighted with its lot.

And let it take its own delight,
And let it range the pastures bare;
Until it reach that group of trees
It may not enter there.

A green unfading grove it is,
Skirted with many a lesser tree--
Hazel and holly, beech and oak--
A bright and flourishing company!

Precious the shelter of those trees,
They screen the cottage that I love;
The sunshine pierces to the roof
And the tall pine-trees tower above.