Welcome to the March Poem of the Month. This month’s selection is a reflection of joy and hope, things that have blessed my days recently.
This past weekend, I traveled to Philadelphia to attend the wedding of the person I anonymously donated bone marrow to almost 15 years ago. I can’t even begin to express the profound sense of joy that I experienced being able to attend this joyous occasion, to see her and her father again, and to meet for the first time her new husband, her 3 month old son, her mother and her other family members and friends. I was honored and privileged to be able to be a part of this event, and to be able to play a part in a story with such a happy ending. This month’s selection is in honor of LaWanda and Emanuel, and I wish them a long life filled with the same joy and happiness that Wordsworth proclaims in this month’s poem.
Warmest Regards,
Stewart
William Wordsworth
(1770 – 1850)
Lines
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.
Edward will come with you;–and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We’ll give to idleness.
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.
Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We’ll give to idleness.
