Poems
Summer Song Of The Strawberry-Girl
It is summer! it is summer! how beautiful it looks!
There is sunshine on the old gray hills, and sunshine on the brooks
A singing-bird on every bough, soft perfumes on the air,
A happy smile on each young lip, and gladness everywhere.
Oh! is it not a pleasant thing to wander through the woods,
To look upon the painted flowers, and watch the opening buds;
Or seated in the deep cool shade at some tall ash-tree’s root,
To fill my little basket with the sweet and scented fruit?
They tell me that my father’s poor — that is no grief to me
When such a blue and brilliant sky my upturn’d eye can see;
They tell me, too, that richer girls can sport with toy and gem;
It may be so — and yet, methinks, I do not envy them.
When forth I go upon my way, a thousand toys are mine,
The clusters of dark violets, the wreaths of the wild vine;
My jewels are the primrose pale, the bind-weed, and the rose;
And shew me any courtly gem more beautiful than those.
And then the fruit! the glowing fruit, how sweet the scent it breathes!
I love to see its crimson cheek rest on the bright green leaves!
Summer’s own gift of luxury, in which the poor may share,
The wild-wood fruit my eager eye is seeking everywhere.
Oh! summer is a pleasant time, with all its sounds and sights;
Its dewy mornings, balmy eves, and tranquil calm delights;
I sigh when first I see the leaves fall yellow on the plain,
And all the winter long I sing — Sweet summer, come again.
There is sunshine on the old gray hills, and sunshine on the brooks
A singing-bird on every bough, soft perfumes on the air,
A happy smile on each young lip, and gladness everywhere.
Oh! is it not a pleasant thing to wander through the woods,
To look upon the painted flowers, and watch the opening buds;
Or seated in the deep cool shade at some tall ash-tree’s root,
To fill my little basket with the sweet and scented fruit?
They tell me that my father’s poor — that is no grief to me
When such a blue and brilliant sky my upturn’d eye can see;
They tell me, too, that richer girls can sport with toy and gem;
It may be so — and yet, methinks, I do not envy them.
When forth I go upon my way, a thousand toys are mine,
The clusters of dark violets, the wreaths of the wild vine;
My jewels are the primrose pale, the bind-weed, and the rose;
And shew me any courtly gem more beautiful than those.
And then the fruit! the glowing fruit, how sweet the scent it breathes!
I love to see its crimson cheek rest on the bright green leaves!
Summer’s own gift of luxury, in which the poor may share,
The wild-wood fruit my eager eye is seeking everywhere.
Oh! summer is a pleasant time, with all its sounds and sights;
Its dewy mornings, balmy eves, and tranquil calm delights;
I sigh when first I see the leaves fall yellow on the plain,
And all the winter long I sing — Sweet summer, come again.
Analysis (ai): The speaker celebrates the sensory abundance of summer, focusing on natural elements like flowers, birds, and fruit as sources of joy and personal wealth, framing nature as both companion and provider.
- Social Position and Class: The poem contrasts economic poverty with spiritual and sensory richness; the speaker rejects material comparisons, asserting that her access to nature negates any sense of lack, a subtle challenge to Victorian class hierarchies.
- Voice and Perspective: Written in the first person, the voice is youthful and self-possessed, not plaintive or sentimental, avoiding the typical Victorian trope of the pitiable working child.
- Relation to Author’s Other Works: Unlike Howitt’s moralizing or temperance-themed poems, this piece emphasizes personal autonomy and sensory immediacy, marking a departure from didacticism toward a more intimate lyric mode found in her later lesser-known writings.
- Historical Context: Composed during the height of industrialization, the poem resists urban modernity by idealizing rural labor and uncommodified nature, aligning with Romantic nostalgia but differing from contemporaneous realist trends in literature.
- Form and Structure: The consistent quatrains with alternating rhyme and rhythmic regularity reflect conventional mid-19th-century versification, serving accessibility over formal innovation.
- Less-Discussed Angle: Rather than reading the speaker as passively consoled by nature, her deliberate selection and valuation of “jewels” like bindweed and violets suggest an act of redefining value, asserting agency in a materialist culture.
- Place in Literary Culture: Though not widely taught, this poem exemplifies Howitt’s underrecognized turn toward child-centered nature lyrics, distinguishing her from more dogmatic moral writers of the period and offering a gentler model of working-class representation.
Mary Howitt
(1799 – 1888)
Mary Howitt
(12 March 1799 – 30 January 1888) was an English writer, editor, translator and a pioneer of the women’s rights movement in the UK. She is most known as the author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly. She translated several works by Hans Christian Andersen and Frederika Bremer. Some of her works were written in conjunction with her husband, William Howitt. Many, in verse and prose, were intended for young people.
