Sara Coleridge

A few days ago, there was a quotation about October from a longer poem, The Months, by Sara Coleridge. The first place I ever read it was in our copy of Childcraft. I never thought of it as being written before; it always seemed to have the bare-boned structure of a traditional rhyme. It goes in full:

The Months

January brings the snow,
makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,
stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daises at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hand with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasants,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

 

“Sara Coleridge (23 December 1802 – 3 May 1852) was an English author and translator. She was the third child and only daughter of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife Sara Fricker.

Her first works were translations from Latin and medieval French. She then married and had several children for whom she wrote instructive verses. These were published as Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children in 1834 which included popular poems like The Months: "January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow." In 1837, she published her longest original work – Phantasmion, A Fairy Tale – which also started as a story for her son Herbert. – Wikipedia.

I’d never heard of her until now, and yet she’s been a presence in my life since I was very young. I also learn that Phantasmion has a very strong claim to be one of the first Fantasy novel ever written. “Described by critic Mike Ashley as "the first fairytale novel written in English". The literary historian Dennis Butts describes Phantasmion as a "remarkable pioneering fantasy". - Wikipedia.