Gael Stuart

The Silver Sage

Are you ready? Come on along and read some homespun poetry as well as a jot and tittle regarding distinguished poets and their works. Gael offers a positive balance of her own nostalgia notes and poetic meanderings with those of others. [Editor's note: Gael no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]


Posted 02/27/2009

Spring Carol

By Gael Stuart

I was delighted to find the Robert Louis Stevenson poem “Spring Carol” on a poetry blog I follow. It reminded me that I hadn’t read any Stevenson in a while. Treasure Island was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I read it several times, and Stevenson—Scottish poet, essayist, and author—became my favorite writer for a time.

Throughout my early school days, the poem “My Shadow,” from A Child’s Garden of Verse, ran second only to my all time favorite, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” by Edward Lear. I memorized them both.

So today my thoughts are of spring, and the poem “Spring Carol” seems appropriate. Alas, at elevations greater than 7,500 feet, there is really no season called spring. Although we Rocky Mountain dwellers like to exclaim, “It’s spring!” this is actually a big fat fib. The duration of the frost-free growing season being 140 days, there is only a season called “longing for spring.”

Here in the shadow of majestic Pikes Peak, we go from winter directly to summer. The heroic crocuses that push through the snow are the spring flowers that smile in the shadows—as the grass sings in the meadows and landside streamlets gush.

With that, I shall end my commentary and indulge my inner child by reciting the rhyme that is now running through my head . . . I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me. . . .

Spring Carol
(Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850–1894)

When loud by landside streamlets gush,
And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
With sun on the meadows
And songs in the shadows
Comes again to me
The gift of the tongues of the lea,
The gift of the tongues of meadows.

Straightway my olden heart returns
And dances with the dancing burns;
It sings with the sparrows;
To the rain and the (grimy) barrows
Sings my heart aloud—
To the silver-bellied cloud,
To the silver rainy arrows.

It bears the song of the skylark down,
And it hears the singing of the town;
And youth on the highways
And lovers in byways
Follows and sees:
And hearkens the song of the leas
And sings the songs of the highways.

So when the earth is alive with gods,
And the lusty ploughman breaks the sod,
And the grass sings in the meadows,
And the flowers smile in the shadows,
Sits my heart at ease,
Hearing the song of the leas,
Singing the songs of the meadows.

By Gael Stuart
The Silver Sage Blog

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