Your weekly slice of Poetry

Welcome back to another week of Poetry Pie! I hope that you all had a great Easter. There is no shortage of beautiful Easter poems to read (despite there always being a shortage of time to read them), so this edition contains two Easter poems, along with two others that are Spring related. Enjoy!

Easter Wings

George Herbert (1593—1633)

This poem is an example of "visual poetry," where the words are shaped on the page in a way that accents the meaning of the text. Taking a hint from the title, it is easily seen how the two stanzas, when viewed from the side, resemble two pairs of wings. This specific visual pattern had been used before, and here Herbert is using it in connection with Easter and "flight."

To achieve this design, the length of the lines decrease symmetrically from the outside toward the center. The line lengths start as pentameter (5 feet), then tetrameter (4 feet), trimeter (3 feet), dimeter (2 feet), and finally monometer (1 foot). What's delightful here is that the lines still flow very well together, something that can be difficult when line lengths are changed too frequently.

Additionally, the poem is rhymed ABABA CDCDC. Note the chiastic nature of the poem, how (for each stanza) the first half is descending (Fall, sin, poor) and the second half is ascending (rise, victory, flight). What better motion is there to relate to Easter?

A Light exists in Spring

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

This poem is written in quatrains (four line stanzas) using trimeter (3 feet) lines. Trimeter is a very interesting and odd length; note how your speech naturally pauses harder at the end of each line. The full stanza, however, is not completely trimeter; she extends the third line of each stanza to be tetrameter (4 feet). This gives it the characteristic flow that it has: the first two lines are the setup, the third line deviates from this and flows cleanly into the last line, which returns and concludes the thought. (This pattern of setup -> deviation -> return is frequently employed in different ways in poetry, just as in music. Look for it elsewhere!)

The poem is rhymed ABCB, though not all stanzas hold to this. The poem has a singular subject: the light of Spring. There is something unique, mysterious and almost sacramental about this light. The cold of winter has been broken and a new regime is coming in to rule.

To the Skylark

William Wordsworth (1770—1850)

"To the Skylark" is written in iambic pentameter, with six line stanzas (sestet). It is rhymed with a ABABCC pattern, the ending couplet providing a satisfying end to the stanza as a whole.

This poem would have done well to be included in the bird-themed edition of Poetry Pie published in March. Addressing the Skylark, Wordsworth praises this "pilgrim of the sky," who, though nesting in the ground, inhabits the sky. Note how he frames this bird: a "type" (as in typology) of those that are both wise and steady. It does not wander aimlessly; it's home is still in the earth. It is both a home-body and an adventurer, neither too much one nor the other. And its adventure is not for its own delight alone, for it pours out its "flood of harmony" upon our world below.

The Sixth Day

Abram Newcomer

Published on Good Friday, this poem makes the comparison between the sixth day of Creation, when God made both land animals and man, and the sixth day of Christ's Holy Week, when he was crucified. I was struck by this connection just the week prior: the day that the first Adam was made alive, the last Adam was made to die. In Christ, the first Adam passed away, taking with him our sin and condemnation. And then he "rested" on the seventh day, awaiting the beginning of the New Creation.

This poem is written in iambic pentameter, with quintain stanzas (5 lines). The rhyming is ABABB. This form was inspired by the John Donne poem that I shared in the last edition of Poetry Pie: Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness.

I hope you enjoyed these selections! Until next time.