A sad tale's best for winter, Shakespeare tells us. I'm wondering if perhaps poetry, both lyrical and narrative, isn't best for summer. I'm thinking of how Keats, in "Ode to a Nightingale," describes that wonderfully musical bird as singing "of summer in full-throated ease"; and how, say, in three-time Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's poem "Ralegh's Prizes," summer "turns her head with its dark tangle / All the way toward us" and however drowsy-making the weather, we pay attention.
All this wonderful poetry, it's filled up my throat as well:
So here's to your summer of full-throated ease
Singing or chanting these poems that will please
You until the leaves turn color and fall
And sad tales for winter you'll recite for us all ...
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