Areopagus Volume XLVIII

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the forty eighth volume of the Areopagus. May is withering fast and June blooms suddenly ahead. So we give our introduction to a mysterious and melancholy little poem called May, written by the great Christina Rossetti:

I cannot tell you how it was,
But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and sunny day
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born
Between the blades of tender corn;
The last egg had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird foregone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was,
But this I know: it did but pass.
It passed away with sunny May,
Like all sweet things it passed away,
And left me old, and cold, and gray.

A splendid meditation on the passing of the month of May, on the passing of something we cannot quite place or name, but which we surely know is there. Hark — 'tis not yet past! There is time yet in May for another instalment of the Areopagus and another seven short lessons. We begin...