A rare day

My daddy knew from memory scores of long narrative poems with which he entertained his children and three generations of babies who followed.

Looking through his grammar school textbooks, it is apparent that children in the early 1900s got a better education by far than kids today. He attributed his love of poetry to his mother and his teachers.

I am thankful I had the same experience as a child - English teachers who insisted on memorization. The beautiful Bewey Bowden. Mrs. Myers, who always fondled a brooch at her neck through every lesson. The dainty Miss Amanda Lowther, who should have lived in Elizabethan times.

In those moments when I can push everything else from my mind, I often recite poems learned long ago.

I will always have poems.

Some are so wonderfully lyrical, they slide off the tongue in lazy rhythmic patterns – poems like Longfellow’s “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”

When I change my small wooden perpetual calendar over to the first of June, I recite a poem that’s become a ritual:

And, what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
When Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur or see life glisten.

That’s all I remember of the lengthy James Russell Lowell poem my daddy recited so many years ago.

But, it’s enough to make the first of June a very special day.

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I located a copy of Lowell’s entire poem online – nature waking to the joyful, carefree days of summer. You just can’t read it without feeling good: LINK