For my reading, I chose Charlotte Mew’s Spring, 1915, found in our Kendall Anthology on page #46. It was the first line that drew me into this poem, specifically the phrase, “Spring will come again”. I was in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in high school, and I played the character Ophelia. For those of you who don’t know, Ophelia loses her mind and, in her last scene in the show, she says this same line. I was unable to find if Mew was directly referencing Shakespeare in this poem, but when I researched into the role in high school, I found that Shakespeare was referencing an old song that was sung during the black death.

Mew uses this poem to point out that the world keeps going. That no matter how horrible things are or have been, there is more. Goodness always returns and God permits peace. It is “Sure of the sky” that there is goodness in the world that comes around, no matter the pain felt in the moment.

I love certainty, as well. I know that there are very few things that one can be sure of, but I think Charlotte Mew did a great job of choosing things that are actually certain.