Poem of the Day: ‘I Sought the Wood in Winter’

Sure, you know of Willa Cather. You know her as the author of such American novels as “My Ántonia,” “O Pioneers,” and “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” But, as noted when her poem “Fides, Spes” appeared as a Poem of the Day in March, she was also a poet. And here in the cold midwinter, it’s worth looking at another of her poems, “I Sought the Wood in Winter.”This Cather poem, offered on a Friday to close the week, is a parallel to A.E. Housman’s “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,” which was Poem of the Day on Monday to open the week. Both poems describe visiting trees in spring and winter, both treat beauty and the passage of time, both seek consolation for the fading of the temporary.“I Sought the Wood in Winter,” however, takes up the philosophical roots of beauty. The poem is written in iambic trimeter lines, rhymed on the second line — which gives a sense of half-meter quatrains, the first and third lines in the quatrain ending with an unstressed syllable to emphasize the line-break caesura into what otherwise would be a six-foot line. And in this meter, the poem argues that spring is more melancholy than winter. With its frailty, spring tells us that it must pass, while winter, with its hardness, tells us that the origin of beauty is in eternal law.I Sought the Wood in Winterby Willa CatherI sought the wood in summer When every twig was green;The rudest boughs were tender, And buds were pink between.Light-fingered aspens trembled In fitful sun and shade,And daffodils were golden In every starry glade.The brook sang like a robin — My hand could check him whereThe lissome maiden willows Shook out their yellow hair.“How frail a thing is Beauty,” I said, “when every breathShe gives the vagrant summer But swifter woos her death.For this the star dust troubles, For this have ages rolled:To deck the wood for bridal And slay her with the cold.”I sought the wood in winter When every leaf was dead;Behind the wind-whipped branches The winter sun set red.The coldest star was rising To greet that bitter air,The oaks were writhen giants; Nor bud nor bloom was there.The birches, white and slender, In deathless marble stood,The brook, a white immortal, Slept silent in the wood.“How sure a thing is Beauty,” I cried. “No bolt can slay,No wave nor shock despoil her, No ravishers dismay.Her warriors are the angels That cherish from afar,Her warders people Heaven And watch from every star.The granite hills are slighter, The sea more like to fail;Behind the rose the planet, The Law behind the veil.”___________________________________________ 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.

Poem of the Day: ‘I Sought the Wood in Winter’

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