POEM OF THE DAY

THOMAS DEKKER, poet and playwright of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, catches the spirit of joy associated with this month of love and greenery and nightingales. The 20th-century Scottish poet Sydney Goodsir Smith captures the same exuberance in his little poem to the philomel, the nightingale personified, or the rossignel, his version of the French for nightingale.

THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY

O! the month of May, the merry month of May,

So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!

O! and then did I unto my true Love say, Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer’s Queen.

Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale

The sweetest singer in all the forest choir,

Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love’s tale:

Lo! yonder she sitteth, her breast against a briar.

But O! I spy the cuckoo, the cuckoo, the cuckoo;

See where she sitteth; come away, my joy;

Come away, I prithee, I do not like the cuckoo

Should sing where my Peggy and I kiss and toy.

O! the month of May, the merry month of May,

So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!

And then did I unto my true Love say, Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer’s Queen.

PHILOMEL

The hushed world o midnicht Stude strucken still,

Still were aa the simmer sternes, The mune slept on the hill.

The void whispered in my hert, The tuim airts were filled As throu the nichtit wuid I heard The dervish rossignel.

The firmament was opened wide And aa the waters melled,

The reid tod stude by the dyke – O Youth! O Luve! O Philomel!