Although this tender ballad is a Scottish staple, it was written around 1850 by a couple of Englishmen: Charles Jeffreys (lyrics) and Sidney Nelson (music).

I have heard the mavis singing
His love song to the morn
I have seen the dew drop clinging
To the rose just newly born
But a sweeter song has cheered me
At the evening’s gentle close
And I’ve seen an eye still brighter
Than the dew drop on the rose
‘Twas thy voice my gentle Mary
And thine artless, winning smile
That made this world an Eden
Bonnie Mary of Argyle.

Tho’ thy voice may lose its sweetness
And thine eye its brightness too
Tho’ thy step may lack its fleetness
And thy hair its sunny hue
Still to me wilt thou be dearer
Than all the world shall own
I have loved thee for thy beauty
But not for that alone
I have sought thy heart, dear Mary
And its goodness was the wile
That has made thee mine forever
Bonnie Mary of Argyle.

You can hear the melody here, and this site has an image of a broadside with the words, published between 1860-1880.

This week’s Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Shaken & Stirred.

We’ve had a very briny week. Yesterday we went to the aquarium; today it was the beach. Naturally I had to reach for Whitman this afternoon; he understands so well the magic of the bluegreen underworld that so fascinates my children.

The World Below the Brine
by Walt Whitman

The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle openings,
and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of
light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the
aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the
bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his
flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the
sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing
that thick-breathing air, as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings
like us who walk this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.

This week’s Poetry Friday roundup can be found at The Simple and the Ordinary.

Good Friday, 1613: Riding Westward
              by John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motions, lose their owne,
And being, by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesses so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstools crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once, pierc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his appare’l, rag’d, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They’are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

And I’m excited about that, because I am a poetry geek in a big, big way. Ever since Anne Shirley inspired eleven-year-old me to memorize some Tennyson so I could walk through woods dreamily and dramatically reciting "The Lady of Shalott"
(never mind that woods were in short supply in the Colorado suburb in
which I grew up), I’ve been hooked. I was even poetry editor of a for a year during grad school. I’ve been reading poems to my kids pretty much since they developed ears. (Even the one whose ears turned out not to work so well.)

I had the privilege of studying with some great poets: Fred Chappell (tremendously great), Alan Shapiro, Vanessa Haley.  I am immensely proud of my good pal Julianna Baggott, poet and novelist, not to mention my former classmate Claudia Emerson,
winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. I published a few poems
myself, before the luxurious expanse of the novel tempted me away.

Speaking of luxury, there was something downright indulgent about
how much time we had in grad school to dig deep into a poem,
"unpacking" it, as we liked to say, savoring every syllable, every
image, every turn of phrase. That was what we were there for: to learn
to write by learning to read. We wrote twenty-page papers on a single
poem; we spent hours discussing the nuances of a single verse. Alan
Shapiro said that if he had his way, all would-be poets would have to
study the work of the masters for seven years before ever being allowed
to pick up a pen. We only had two years to immerse ourselves in such study, and during that time we were expected to produce a thesis consisting of our own original poetry or fiction, but Alan’s intensity impressed us, and we threw ourselves into the serious study of poetry with a sort of virtuous relish.

It was a wonderful experience, but I have to say that not even the heady joy of living and breathing poetry with other poets compares to the delights of immersing myself in poetry with my own children. A good poem makes their eyes shine; that’s the simplest way I can put it. Poetry is power in simplicity, language boiled down to its purest form: a concentration, rich and potent.

In celebration of Poetry Month, I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts on sharing poetry with children over at The Lilting House. I had intended to begin today, but poor Wonderboy’s sad adventure has set my plans back a bit. Today, for us, it’ll be dentists instead of dactyls, alas.
 

Sisters, by Rilla

They scoop me up and say I’m delicious;
They grant practically all of my wishes
(Except when I wish to gnaw on a Lego).
Mostly I wish to go where they go.

Jane is the one who totes me like mother
And won’t let me pull out the hair of my brother.
Rose guards me from anything ‘ticingly teeny.
The one who twirls me around is Beanie.

This week’s Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Chicken Spaghetti.

HT: Mama Squirrel

I love this poem by Mona van Duyn and was so happy to find it online, in full, at the Poets.org site. Here’s a taste:

We enjoyed your visit, it was nice of you to bring
the feeder but a terrible waste of your money
for that big bag of feed since we won’t be living
more than a few weeks long.  We can see
them good from where we sit, big ones and little ones
but you know when I farmed I used to like to hunt
and we had many a good meal from pigeons
and quail and pheasant but these birds won’t
be good for nothing and are dirty to have so near
the house.  Mother likes the redbirds though.

Read the rest. The closing line is a jewel.
 

…Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes :
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire :
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam ; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things ! no tongue
Their beauty might declare :
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware :
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray ;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

Oh sleep ! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole !
To Mary Queen the praise be given !
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul…

—from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sonnet: On the Sonnet
by John Keats

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fetter’d, in spite of pained loveliness,
Let us find, if we must be constrain’d,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of Poesy:
Let us inspect the Lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.