In Green Meadows

I've told you before that a baby goat will improve almost any day!

This is my grandson, Trey, with the black goat with white ears, 

a beauty they had a couple of dozen years ago.

How oft in school-boy days

How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school’s sway
Have I run forth to Nature as to a friend,—
With some pretext of o’erwrought sight, to spend
My school-time in green meadows far away!
Careless of summoning bell, or clocks that strike,
I marked with flowers the minutes of my day:
For still the eye that shrank from hated hours,
Dazzled with decimal and dividend,
Knew each bleached alder-root that plashed across
The bubbling brook, and every mass of moss;
Could tell the month, too, by the vervain-spike,—
How far the ring of purple tiny flowers
Had climbed; just starting, may-be, with the May,
Half-light, or tapering off at Summer’s end.

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)

The Oxford Book of American Poetry; edited by David Lehman,

Oxford University Press

Tuckerman published only one book of sonnets. It was not successful, and he did not publish another. His work was rediscovered much later. His work has been championed by Yvor Winters as being second only to Whitman in the description of natural detail .Four of these sonnets are included in this Oxford Book; I like them all and had trouble deciding which one to use. Have you ever tried writing a sonnet? I've been afraid.