April, when spring begins to blossom, is National Poetry Month in the U.S. Let’s celebrate both.
See if you can match the poem depicting spring (A – I) with the poet (1 – 9)
The Poems
- in Just…
spring when the world is mud…
luscious the little
lame balloonman - Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom’s part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent’s art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor stay till on the year’s last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart. - Random thoughts
and loneliness trouble me
but I am soothed by the
anticipation of cherry blossoms
and spring rain falling on my hut. - April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. - A LITTLE madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown,
Who ponders this tremendous scene…
This whole experiment of green,
As if it were his own! - Open my ears to music; let
Me thrill with Spring’s first flutes and drums…
But never let me dare forget
The bitter ballads of the slums. - For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils - I remember, I remember
There were ghostly veils and laces…
In the shadowy bowery places…
With lovers’ ardent faces
Bending to one another,
Speaking each his part.
They infinitely echo
In the red cave of my heart.
‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.’
They said to one another.
They spoke, I think, of perils past.
They spoke, I think, of peace at last.
One thing I remember:
Spring came on forever,
Spring came on forever,”
Said the Chinese nightingale. - O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro’ the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!
The Poets
- William Wordsworth
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- Emily Dickinson
- Vachel Lindsay
- E. E. Cummings
- William Blake
- Otasaki Rengetsu
- T.S. Eliot
- Louis Untermeyer
Answers after the jump.
Answers to Spring Poems & Poets
- – 5. EE Cummings
- – 2. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- – 7. Otasaki Rengetsu
- – 8. TS Eliot
- – 3. Emily Dickinson
- – 9. Louis Untermeyer
- – 1. William Wordsworth
- – 4. Vachel Lindsay
- – 6. William Blake