A Chanted Calendar Here is the Year's Processional in verse; the story of her hours, her days, her seasons, told as only poets can, because they see and hear things not revealed to you and me, and are able by their magic to make us sharers in the revelation. Read the first six poems and ask yourself whether you have ever realized the glories of the common day; from the moment when morning from her orient chambers comes, and the lark at heaven's gate sings, to the hour when the moon, unveiling her peerless light, throws her silver mantle o'er the dark, and the firmament glows with living sapphires. It is the task of poetry not only to say noble things, but to say them nobly; having beautiful fancies, to clothe them in beautiful phrases, and if you search these poems you will find some of the most wonderful wordpictures in the English language. How charming Drayton's description of the summer breeze: "The wind had no more strength than this, That leisurely it blew, To make one leaf the next to kiss " June If the day is dreary you need only read Lowell's Weather," and like the bird sitting at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom among the leaves, your illumined being will overrun with the deluge of sum 66 66 mer it receives." "Around the radiant fireplace enclosed A CHANTED CALENDAR Daybreak DAY had awakened all things that be, The lark, and the thrush, and the swallow free, The crickets were still in the meadow and hill: Morning Now morning from her orient chambers came, A Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, Chanted And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers Calendar JOHN KEATS. A Morning Song Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin Arise, arise! From "Cymbeline.' WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Evening in Paradise Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray |