Q: MY older sister, who is 80, started reciting the poem below which she says she learned at school in Birtley. The verses she remembers are:

January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain, thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill. Stirs the dancing daffodil.

April showers bring forth May flowers.

May brings the little lambs, dancing round their fleecy dams.

What are the other verses? - Joyce Watson, Darlington.

A: THE original verses for April and May were slightly different from those your sister remembers and I give them below, along with the remaining verses.

April brings the primrose sweet, scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs, skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses. Fills the children's hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers. Apricots and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn. Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit. Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant. Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast. Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet. Blazing fire and Christmas treat.

This poem, The Months, is an extract from Pretty Verses for Good Children, written in 1834 by Sara Coleridge, the fourth child and only daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Sara could speak six languages and was a well read and talented poet in her own right, but was overshadowed by her father. Her two most famous works were Pretty Verses for Good Children, written for her own children, and a prose narrative fairytale called Phantasmion.

In 1829, Sara married her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge, and after her father's death in 1834, he took on the task of editing his work. When her husband died in 1843, this work passed to Sara, and she oversaw the publication of many of his poems in the 1840s. When Sara died in 1852, thousands of pages of her own work were discovered and critics believe her talents could have developed much further if she had not been so preoccupied with her father's work.

Published: Monday, March 25, 2002

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