Poem-a-Day - from "The Land" by Vita Sackville-West

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April 3, 2022 

from “The Land”

Vita Sackville-West

That was a spring of storms. They prowled the night;
Low level lightning flickered in the east
Continuous. The white pear-blossom gleamed
Motionless in the flashes; birds were still;
Darkness and silence knotted to suspense,
Riven by the premonitory glint
Of skulking storm, a giant that whirled a sword
Over the low horizon, and with tread
Earth-shaking ever threatened his approach,
But to delay his terror kept afar,

And held earth stayed in waiting like a beast
Bowed to receive a blow. But when he strode
Down from his throne of hills upon the plain,
And broke his anger to a thousand shards
Over the prostrate fields, then leapt the earth
Proud to accept his challenge; drank his rain;
Under his sudden wind tossed wild her trees;
Opened her secret bosom to his shafts;
The great drops spattered; then above the house
Crashed thunder, and the little wainscot shook
And the green garden in the lightning lay.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 3, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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The Land was first published in 1926 by William Heinemann Ltd.

Vita Sackville-West, born Victoria Mary Sackville-West on March 9, 1892, in Knole, Kent, England, was a poet, novelist, journalist, and diarist. She was the author of many books, including her pastoral epic The Land (William Heinemann Ltd., 1926) and her Collected Poems (Hogarth Press, 1933), both of which separately won the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature. She died on June 2, 1962.

The Land
(William Heinemann Ltd., 1926)


“Squall” by Leonora Speyer
read more
“Spring Storm” by William Carlos Williams
read more

Thanks to Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (Greenwillow Books, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Listen to a Q&A about Nye’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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