A friend of Emily Dickinson during their shared childhood at Amherst, Massachusetts, Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) was the author of many books, including a novel, “Ramona,” inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” dramatizing the plight of the Mission Indians in California. She also published five volumes of poetry.

Today’s poem comes from her book “A Calendar of Sonnets,” published the year after her death. It’s a variation on the Petrarchan sonnet, keeping that form’s abbaabba octet but adding a sestet whose rhyme scheme is cdcddc. In the clarity of late winter, the poem’s speaker notes, the year is poised on the brink of spring with all its promise. And that is when the season lends itself to rites of expiation for the sins of the old year.   

February 
by Helen Hunt Jackson  
 
Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white; 
And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still; 
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill, 
And willow stems grow daily red and bright. 
These are days when ancients held a rite 
Of expiation for the old year’s ill, 
And prayer to purify the new year’s will: 
Fit days, ere yet the spring rains blur the sight, 
Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste, 
And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed 
The ardent summer’s joy to have and taste; 
Fit days, to give to last year’s losses heed, 
To reckon clear the new life’s sterner need; 
Fit days, for Feast of Expiation placed!