A Calendar of Sonnets

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Calendar of Sonnets, by Helen
Hunt Jackson
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Title: A Calendar of Sonnets
Author: Helen Hunt Jackson
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9825]
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Edition: 10
Language: English
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CALENDAR
OF SONNETS ***
Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
A Calendar of Sonnets
By
Helen Jackson
1886,
January
O winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from
thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn

Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
The streams than under ice.
June could not hire
Her roses to forego the strength they learn
In
sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn
The bridges thou dost lay
where men desire
In vain to build.
O Heart, when Love's sun goes
To northward, and the sounds of
singing cease,
Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.
Sleep on
content, as sleeps the patient rose.
Walk boldly on the white
untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter's own release.
February.
Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the
winter's pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins
fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are the days
when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year's ill,
And
prayer to purify the new year's will:
Fit days, ere yet the spring rains
blur the sight,
Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste,

And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed
The ardent
summer's joy to have and taste;
Fit days, to give to last year's losses

heed,
To reckon clear the new life's sterner need;
Fit days, for Feast
of Expiation placed!
March
Month which the warring ancients strangely styled
The month of
war,--as if in their fierce ways
Were any month of peace!--in thy
rough days
I find no war in Nature, though the wild
Winds clash
and clang, and broken boughs are piled
At feet of writhing trees. The
violets raise
Their heads without affright, without amaze,
And sleep
through all the din, as sleeps a child.
And he who watches well may
well discern
Sweet expectation in each living thing.
Like pregnant
mother the sweet earth doth yearn;
In secret joy makes ready for the
spring;
And hidden, sacred, in her breast doth bear
Annunciation
lilies for the year.
April
No days such honored days as these! When yet
Fair Aphrodite
reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever
bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no
age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And
leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did
beget.
And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
Her shrines
forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
A holier symbol still in seal and
sign,
Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
When Christ
ascended, in the time of birth
Of spring anemones, in Palestine.
May
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.
June
O month whose promise and fulfilment blend,
And burst in one! it
seems the earth can store
In all her roomy house no treasure more;

Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend
On fruit, when once this
stintless flowering end.
And yet no tiniest flower shall fall before
It
hath made ready at its hidden core
Its tithe of seed, which we may
count and tend
Till harvest. Joy of blossomed love, for thee
Seems
it no fairer thing can yet have birth?
No room is left for deeper
ecstasy?
Watch