It’s that dull end of winter time; I was driving through the countryside and everything seemed drear… not particularly cold, not wet, not particularity anything – a typical mid-February afternoon. Earlier I had read an article about February weather which mentioned that on occasion, February had been a month of snow… not this year, not in Somerset anyway.
This sonnet by John Masefield is full of imagery of summer, ‘full-leaved Summer’… and after this afternoon’s morose weather, it seems a nice reminder of the warm days to come.
Beauty, let be; I cannot see your face,
I shall not know you now, nor touch your feet,
Only within me tremble to your grace
Tasting this crumb vouchsafed which is so sweet.
Even when the full-leaved Summer bore no fruit,
You give me this, this apple of man’s tree;
This planet sings when other spheres were mute,
This light begins when darkness covered me.
Now, though I know that I shall never know
All, through my fault, nor blazon with my pen
That path prepared where only I could go,
Still, I have this, not given to other men.
Beauty, this grace, this spring, this given bread,
This life, this dawn, this wakening from the dead.
Lois Elsden 