With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by the Sun’s poetry editor, Joseph Bottum of Dakota State University, with the help of a North Carolina poet, Sally Thomas. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

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Everyone knows the “Thirty days hath September” mnemonic, which dates from at least the 15th century. But Founding Father — and scientist and diplomat and mad coiner of aphorisms — Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), in a brief set of rhyming pentameter couplets, took a look at the final day of February in 1746 as an occasion to talk about nature’s frugality and the foolishness of human expense.

‘February hath xxviii days’
By Benjamin Franklin

Man’s rich with little, were his Judgment true,
Nature is frugal, and her Wants are few;
Those few Wants answer’d, bring sincere Delights,
But Fools create themselves new Appetites.
Fancy and Pride seek Things at vast Expence,
Which relish not to Reason nor to Sense
Like Cats in Airpumps, to subsist we strive
On Joys too thin to keep the Soul alive.