Winterglint

Spenser Reboot: Prothalamion

Calm was the day, though all of three degrees,
from Constable-cloud-kettling the sun
leaped spry as spring. For now, dawn battles won,
he'd no thought for the dusk. 'Rise from your knees;
see me above the trees.'
The blue-tits perched on topmost twigs poured down
delicate liquid trills, from near and far.
Despite my aches and pains I couldn't frown.
Doors of my drowsiness had creaked ajar;
to sun there seemed no bar,
and so into my garden lumbered out.
February - that ragged, scraggy lout,
bare but for seedlings sprung between leaf-rot.
'Sweet birds,' I said. 'There's nothing much to tout,
save all that time-forgot.'
Denial tweeted not;
but in the silence something in me knew
that long cast of summer had hooked me through.

There in a pot, down where the gravel's sown
with sea-stones from our holidays gone-by,
some virid moss had raised up thin stalks high,
to scale as snowdrops on a grass verge grown,
and not to me unknown.
Each stalk a seta with calyptra head,
containing spores, full zygotes fertilized,
bowed on the stalk, as prayers to gods were said,
before the captains might be satisfied:
'Let our armada these cold breezes thread,
through February dread.'
The sun perhaps must answer to that chance:
embryos ripen in photonic dance
when, UV-full, the spiky microphylls
weave water, air into their own substance;
and so each capsule fills -
if such bright future wills;
for in their silence something in them knew,
that long cast of summer had hooked them through.

....................

This is modeled on Spenser's Prothalamion... which refrains the line Eliot quoted in the Wasteland -'Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song': It is however a pastoral. And I think I can do pastoral.

Here are two stanzas of the Prothalamion : 'A Spousall Verse in Honour of the Double Marriage of Ladie Elizabeth and Ladie Katherine Somerset'

CALM was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play,
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair;
When I whose sullen care,
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In prince's court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain,
Walked forth to ease my pain
Along the shore of silver streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorned with dainty gems,
Fit to deck maidens' bowers,
And crown their paramours,
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

There, in a meadow, by the river's side,
A flock of nymphs I chanced to espy,
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby,
With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied,
As each had been a bride;
And each one had a little wicker basket,
Made of fine twigs, entrailed curiously,
In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket,
And with fine fingers cropt full featously
The tender stalks on high.
Of every sort, which in that meadow grew,
They gathered some; the violet pallid blue,
The little daisy, that at evening closes,
The virgin lily, and the primrose true,
With store of vermeil roses,
To deck their bridegrooms' posies
Against the bridal day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.