I woke this morning to a sky of shocking blue, with clouds so fluffy and white they looked more like the creation of children set loose with a bag of cotton balls, than anything to be found in nature. The wind shook my window in its casement and there it was, the embodiment of a poem I memorized when I was just learning to read...
Clouds
White sheep, white sheep,
On a blue hill,
When the wind stops
You all stand still;
When the wind blows
You walk away slow,
White sheep, white sheep,
Where do you go?
I still have a few of my most well worn and loved books from childhood. I wanted to be sure to give "Clouds" author credit, so I went to my shelf and there between an old scratch and sniff Winnie the Pooh book and my copy of Miss Suzy, was Poems and Prayers for the Very Young. As a kid I loved the pictures and remember wishing there were more poems and fewer prayers. That may be part of why I read "Clouds" so much.
The author is Christina G. Rossetti. I'd never heard of her, but of course Wikipedia had. It turns out she was a famous poet in England in the 1800s, who many saw as the successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her life reads like a novel, not something I think I've ever said about an encyclopedia entry.
Without realizing it, you've probably encountered her poetry before. She's the author of the Christmas carol "In the Bleak Midwinter". It's somehow fitting that a break in this winter's bleak weather lead me to learning about Rossetti.
Comments