April 23, 1564 to April 23, 1611 -- William Shakespeare

"And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot
And thereby hangs a tale."
As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7

Yes, we are studying poetry this month in our home school. It seemed like the perfect month to do so. After all, April is National Poetry Month. Want a quick lesson in Iambic Pentameter? Here is is: Living Iambic Pentameter

Shakespeare wasn't the only well-known poet to have been born in the month of April. Others include:

William Wordsworth
"For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils." from "The Daffodils"

Seamus Heaney
"...But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it." from "Digging"

Vladimir Nabokov
"Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss,
poems that take a thousand years to die
but ape the immortality of this
red label on a little butterfly." from "On Discovering A Butterfly"

Gabriela Mistral
"I scatter bits of earth and rose dust,
and in the moon's airy and blue powder
what is left of you is a prisoner." from "Death Sonnet I"

Maya Angelou
"Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise." from "Still I Rise"

Robert Browning
"Where the apple reddens
Never pry --
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I." from "A Woman's Last Word"

Robert Penn Warren
"...The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time." from "Evening Hawk"

And there are many others.

Wouldn't you have loved to have been in Washington for this?

And I guess that's enough about poetry for today!