Re: PPB: A Song for April / Charles G.D. Roberts

On Monday, April 3, 2023 at 7:00:12 AM UTC-4, NancyGene wrote:

On Sunday, April 2, 2023 at 8:16:55 PM UTC, NancyGene wrote:

On Sunday, April 2, 2023 at 7:07:34 PM UTC, George Dance wrote:

Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
A Song for April, by Charles G.D. Roberts
[...]
The south bank has had views of her;
The thorn shall exact his dues of her;
The willows adream
By the freshet stream
Shall ask what boon they choose of her.
[...]
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https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-song-of-april-charles-gd-roberts.html

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#pennyspoems

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Here is the complete poem:
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A Song for April
Charles G.D. Roberts
>
List! list! The buds confer.
This noonday they’ve had news of her;
The south bank has had views of her;
The thorn shall exact his dues of her;
The willows adream
By the freshet stream
Shall ask what boon they choose of her.
Up! up! The world’s astir;
The would-be green has word of her;
Root and germ have heard of her,
Coming to break
Their sleep and wake
Their hearts with every bird of her.
>
See! see! How swift concur
Sun, wind, and rain at the name of her,
A-wondering what became of her;
The fields flower at the flame of her;
The glad air sings
With dancing wings
And the silvery shrill acclaim of her.
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We deduce that Mr. Roberts was NOT invoking ancient incantations in his
poem. "List!" is an archaic form of listen. "Up! up!" means wake up/get
up, not an incantation. "See! see!" means to see. (Duh!)

>
No, it doesn't sound like 'incantations' or a Civil War marching song
FTM. this use of repetition is directed at the speaker's readers or
hearers.
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We couldn't find the exact date that Mr. Roberts wrote the poem, but it
was sometime before 1898.
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Did you find a publication date in 1898? The earliest I found was 1901.
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We see a double meaning in the first line of the third stanza. The last
line in stanza two mentions "every bird" and the first line contains the
word "swift," which is a category of birds. However, if the meaning is
that the sun, wind and rain "swift" concur at her name, that should be
"How swiftly concur." It would be ideal if there was a bird called a
"shrill," but we couldn't find a bird species by that name. Therefore,
we must be content to have the "silvery shrill" come from the "glad air"
and "dancing wings."

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I suspect you're right about "swift", and I enoyed your other comments
here..
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George Dance, would you care to discuss the rhyme scheme of this poem?
There are many repeats of "her" in the AAAABBA scheme in the first
stanza, which is followed by AAACCA in the 2nd and AAAAADDA in the
third.

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I wouldn't agree with that. I'd give the rhyme scheme as:
ABBBCCB ADDEED AFFFGGF
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The reason being that the B, D, and F rhymes are not simply rhyming
"her" with "her" (which wouldn't actually be rhymes.)  The rhymes
Roberts uses are more complex:
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B= "NEWS of her" "VIEWS of her" "DUES of her" "CHOOSE of her"
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D = "WORD of her" "HEARD of her" "BIRD of her"
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F = "NAME of her" "beCAME of her" "FLAME of her" acCLAIM of her".
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The A rhymes do rhyme with "her" as well as with each other, and I
wouldn't call that "accidental" since it looks like Roberts intended
that. It does give the poem a more musical effect.
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Why do you think the second stanza only has six lines instead of the
seven that the first and third have?

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Good question; I don't have an answer. My first thought was that the
website where I'd first encountered it had left out a line, or copied
from one that did. (I've run into that before.) But I did find it in the
1901 poems, as I said, and that's how it appears there.
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Do you think "her" should be capitalized?
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I'm not sure. I thought of April as a goddess; in fact I used a
sculpture of Diana to illustrate the poem. Capitalizing "her" would have
made that explicit, but I can understand Roberts preferring to just
suggest it.
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Is this an actual song?

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Not that I know of. I went looking for videos, but couldn't find any.
Nor did the title turn up any songbooks for me.