Poem of the Day: ‘February’
In the clarity of late winter, the year is poised on the brink of spring with all its promise. And that is when the season lends itself to rites of expiation for the sins of the old year.
A friend of Emily Dickinson during their shared childhood at Amherst, Massachusetts, Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) was the author of many books, including a novel, “Ramona,” inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” dramatizing the plight of the Mission Indians in California. She also published five volumes of poetry.
Today’s poem comes from her book “A Calendar of Sonnets,” published the year after her death. It’s a variation on the Petrarchan sonnet, keeping that form’s abbaabba octet but adding a sestet whose rhyme scheme is cdcddc. In the clarity of late winter, the poem’s speaker notes, the year is poised on the brink of spring with all its promise. And that is when the season lends itself to rites of expiation for the sins of the old year.
February
by Helen Hunt Jackson
Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are days when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year’s ill,
And prayer to purify the new year’s will:
Fit days, ere yet the spring rains blur the sight,
Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste,
And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed
The ardent summer’s joy to have and taste;
Fit days, to give to last year’s losses heed,
To reckon clear the new life’s sterner need;
Fit days, for Feast of Expiation placed!
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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
