Saturday Poetry Corner: May And The Poets

 

 

"The pleasure given by a flower
To mortal eyes through Nature's power
Is so bestowed on me that there
I fancy my sweet love to be
Standing himself in front of me
Whose person hath so kindled me." 
Neifile's poem-The Decameron*

The Decameron
(1916)
John William Waterhouse
(1849-1917)
English Pre-Raphaelite painter

 

 There is May in books forever;

May will part from Spenser never;

May's in Milton, May's in Prior,

May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;

May's in all the Italian books:-

She has old and modern nooks,

Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,

In happy places they call shelves,

And will rise and dress your rooms

With a drapery thick with blooms. 

Come, ye rains, then if ye will,

May's at home and with me still;

But come rather, thou, good weather,

And find us in the fields together. 

 

 

"May And The Poets" 
James Henry Leigh Hunt
(1784-1859)
19th century English poet
 &essayist

 

* Neifile's poem is taken from "The Decameron" a collection
 of short stories by Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). 

It is a story about a group of young people, seven women and three men, taking refuge 
inside a secluded villa just outside of Florence, Italy in order to escape the Black Death,
also known as the Bubonic Plague, which was sweeping through the city and across
the European continent at the time. Written as a "story within a story" the characters
 spin imaginary tales in order to pass the time of their quarantine.

 Boccaccio's "The Decameron" not only documents one of the most fatal pandemics
in human history, but is considered a masterpiece of early Italian prose.