David Donaldson, born in England, won a scholarship to study English at Cambridge. He taught on VSO in Sri Lanka and worked with homeless people in London before taking root as a Waldorf teacher.
His poems blend a deep love for language and nature with pedagogical insight, and the exemplary verses he wrote for his classes over the years have inspired children and adults alike. Selections are published in ‘Poems for Younger Children’ and its sequel.
David and his Swiss wife Anne Marie have two grown-up sons. He enjoys retirement in rural Herefordshire and draws on two decades of classroom experience to inform his role as a trustee of the Steiner Academy Hereford, where he used to teach.
Besides helping his wife to tend the garden, David continues to write poetry and welcomes correspondence.
Contact email: daviddon@myphone.coop
POEMS FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN
These poems are suitable for class recitation. Written as Birthday Verses for children aged seven to eleven, they also offer inspiration for teachers who are composing their own annual Report Verses.
CONTENTS
Snug the Dormouse – The Heart of Sunshine – The Year’s New Tune – Spring is Coming – Poem in March – From Winter to Summer – In the Seed – The Butterfly – The Seed – The Wasp and the Bee – The Clouds – The Stream – The Wandering Waters – The River – The Acorn – The Promised Future – The Sturdy Sapling – Saint Martin and the Beggar – Christmas – God’s Wisdom – The Arrow – The Sun sheds its light – I in Me – The Caterpillar – The Argument – The Three Ways – The Task – Beech Tree – The Olive Tree – The Golden Feather – Theoclea and the Oracle of Delphi – The Dove – Verse for Protection – Verse for Courage – The Trees – Thanks for my Two Dry Feet
Snug the dormouse
Sleeping fast,
Wrapped around
In its nest of grass.
Green-fingered snowdrops
Tipped with white
As dawning blossoms
Peep at the light.
Sharp-eyed robin
Chirping clear:
“The time for waking
Is drawing near.”
Bright the winter sun,
Light-blue the sky,
Long-legged the early lambs
Skipping high.
Snug the dormouse
Sleeping fast,
Soon to awake
In its nest of grass.
Swollen full with winter’s rains
The swirling stream babbles along
Swishing puddles over the lane
And chattering a merry song,
Calling to the wayside debris
Of sticks and fallen leaves
To follow its gurgling progress
Past fields and waving trees.
Off they scatter, helter-skelter
With never a moment’s pause
Drawn by the rushing water
To follow its heedless course;
Dipping and jolting and turning
Drawn by its swift embrace,
Bobbing up and down without ceasing,
Without chance of a resting place …
As I watch them all rushing and swirling,
Helplessly carried along,
I give thanks for my two dry feet,
And sing my own merry song.
“As a class teacher, I chose a number of David’s poems for my pupils’ Birthday Verses, and we enjoyed the class recitation of his excellent curriculum-related poems. These, both profound and concise, beautifully set the tone for the topic at hand. Highly recommended!”
MORE POEMS FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN
The second volume contains a wide variety of poems, initially written for individual children. A number of them are inspired by key topics of the Steiner Waldorf curriculum.
CONTENTS
Who am I? – Michaelmas – November – December – Christmas – The Shepherd’s Story – Winter’s World of Make-believe – Waking up – Snowdrop – The Complaint – The Dormouse – Spring’s Return – The Challenge – The Winds of March – Winter’s Idea of Fun – Song of the Sunbeams – Summer’s Come – Water Lily – In My Garden – The Creation – Taste and See – Down to Earth – The Oak Tree of Kildare – My Shelter – My Houses – The Delay – A New Start – The Promised Land – Odin in Search of Wisdom – Frigga’s Gleaming Gaze – The Arrival of Iduna – The Rescue of Iduna – The Farewell 1 – The Farewell 2 – The Bluebell and the Snowdrop – The Daffodil and the Bluebell – The Hare and the Tortoise – The Rainbow – To the Sun – Questions and Answers – The Sun’s Constancy – I’ll Shine in All You Try – The King of Ireland’s Son Pauses to Think – Seal – At the Seaside
I am air, I am breeze,
I’m a bird flying free;
One beat of my wings
Lifts me over the trees.
I swoop and I swerve
And mount up high,
The hills below me
Above me, just sky.
And the white clouds
Like swans swimming along
And shifting shape
As I pour out my song:
I am air, I am breeze,
I’m a bird in a tree –
Or perching on cliffs
Overlooking the sea.
From the cold ground see us peep –
We’re the earth’s life stirring.
From its drawn-out winter’s sleep
Spring is now returning.
Though white frosts still freeze the grass
And shrill winds are blowing,
It’s time for winter’s world to pass
And leave us to our growing.
We’re the first to show our heads
In snow or icy showers.
Not for us to stay in bed
Through the daylight hours.
February may be cold
But we don’t mind the shaking
Of a little rain or wind –
We’re SNOWDROPS, we’re AWAKING!
“David’s inspired and inspiring poetry for children embodies the Waldorf Spirit in its very best sense. It speaks to our inmost being, enriching it with memorable lines and thoughtful phrasing.”
A TREASURY OF TREES
“A Treasury of Trees is a rich and imaginative exploration of our relationship to the Earth and all we stand to gain by entering more deeply into its life.”
CONTENTS
That Seed – Mangrove – The Trees – Hentland – Beech Wood – Hazel – Old Hazel Tree – Oak Tree – Sweet Chestnut – Consider the Trees – Hornbeam – Alder – The Green Dream – Young Pine – Conifer Wood – Broadleaf Wood – Ash – Annunciation – Dates and the Date Palm – Christmas Tree – Holly – Weeping Willow – Hawthorn Tree – Elder Tree – Rowan – Silver Birch – Cherry – Ancient Holly Grove – Holy Well – Old Oak – Yew – Olive – Dawn Redwood – Lime Tree – Ancient Oak – Alder – Coconut – Rubber Tree – Douglas Fir – Cocoa Tree – Mahogany – View from the Ramparts – Yew Conscripted – Eucalyptus Tree – Giant Sequoia – Cork Oak – Neem – The Cedars of Lebanon – Thoughts in a Redwood Forest – Thoughts of a Conifer Plantation – Lombardy Poplar – Yew Tree – A’s for Apple – ‘And all was for an Apple’ – Apple Tree – Yew – Trees on the Skyline
OAK TREE
A royal summit, crowned and waving.
A watchtower over miles and years.
Pillar trunk raising a cathedral space,
Roof-dome in constant motion
Its own mystery long since served
By its buried acorn and the summons
Of sun, wind, rain to this one patch
Of earth. The strength here to sail
The seas, hold up a hundred roofs,
Scatter its largesse of acorns from
Bunched twig tips, its greenwood face
Of leaves lobed and leathery; and heal
Its scars and wounds from the dead
Or sawn-off remnants of old campaigns,
Once the blazing fuel of winter hearths.
‘AND ALL WAS FOR AN APPLE’
Why’s the Apple the guilty fruit?
Genesis never mentions it.
Yet it’s clear as the picture glass
Capturing Eve reaching
For something too delicious to resist –
A Roman cultivar, no doubt,
Or else it might have proved
Too bitter and she’d have had
To spit it out. Perhaps we thought
To point the blame just as
Our salvation was proclaimed
And Apple’s mystery had begun
To dawn on us? That wilful
Magic, each seed going its own way
And we helpless to change them
(Or our own crabbed selves)
Without devotion to the patient craft
Of learning how to graft.
READERS’ COMMENTS
“A Treasury of Trees is a rich and imaginative exploration of our relationship to the Earth and all we stand to gain by entering more deeply into its life. This tree hymnal is a work of devotion, in which David Donaldson sings, it seems, almost every tree in Christendom, but often doing so with a pagan magic. His language is at turns muscular, sinuous, sylphish or knuckly as he turns the pages of the natural world. Here, poetry and ecological awareness become inseparably entwined. There are some wonderful delights in the dense and vivid woods that the poet recreates for us. I’m sure the trees themselves are very glad to be remembered into us in these words.”
“I think it is a triumph and deserves a wide readership. The variety of form you achieve through the book adds to the reader’s pleasure. It’s ‘proper poetry’ in the sense that it repays multiple and continuing reading, in that more of its meanings and pleasures are revealed with every visit.”
“If you are fond of trees and seek to connect with their characteristics in a deeper way, this book is for you. It also makes a great birthday gift or Christmas present – not just for tree-huggers.”
A TREASURY OF PLANTS
This volume of poems investigates the particular nature of each chosen plant. To the Waldorf teacher it offers thought-provoking material, suitable for class recitation to accompany the children’s introduction to Botany.
CONTENTS
Stunned – Snowdrop – Daffodil Rescue – Crocus – Be my Valentine? – The Wild Bunch – Primrose – Ash Wednesday – Wood Anemone – Marsh Marigold – The Lesser Celandine – Bluebell – Stitchwort – Columbine – Spring Rain – Cow Parsley – The Grasses – White Lilac – Lily – Rose – Wild Strawberry – Poppy – Sunflower – Earth’s Alive – At the Poles – At the Equator – In the Desert – The Maquis Landscape – Tree of Life – Algae – Mosses – Lichen – Fern – Mushrooms – Fungi – Parasitic Fungi – Seed Knowledge – A World Apart – Stem and Leaf – Bud – Pollen Specks, Nectar Sips – Pollen Hoard – Cuttings – Trees – Ivy – Garlic Mustard – Creeping Buttercup – The Brassicas – Onion – Stinging Nettle – Honeysuckle – A Bouquet of Herbs – A Bouquet of Dead Nettles – Orchid – Dandelion – Daisy – Lily – Blue and Gold – Gaining Ground? – Evolution – Raking Leaves – Mistletoe
LILY
The first sweet breath of morning
And the lily to attention on its slender stem,
Mirrored in the hush of the pond’s
Seamless surface; twin top-heavy
Trumpet-blossoms raised on the air,
Virgin-white and incandescent.
Green streaks delving into deep-
Gorged throats of whiteness,
Curled edges peeled back in six
To broadcast the distillation
Of all that spiralling growth.
Exchange gifts! Your amazed
Attention for these – summer’s
White-woven wedding pavilions,
Seeded shooting stars of soothing fragrance:
Annunciation of heart’s ease.
IN THE DESERT
The green pasture of the Promised Land,
The spreading shade of the soft leaf,
Has shrivelled to baked earth beneath
An unsparing sky. It’s reduced
To flattened forms, squat globes,
Monumental pillars; waxed stems
Of fleshy fibre tough as leather,
Some fortified with spikes like
Hardened solar rays. Here’s home
In water’s absence within a ring
Of fire. Supplies to see them through
The burning days, the freezing nights,
Must be secured inside: leaf and stem
Incorporate. And bright flowers springing
From cactus tips like Athene fully-armed
From the head of Zeus, will flare so furiously,
They’ll burn out within a single day or night.
READERS’ COMMENTS
“I’ve just finished reading A Treasury of Plants (…) and I must write to tell you how much I enjoyed them. It’s now with the second of my neighbours; the first who borrowed it was very enthusiastic.”
“Your collection is ‘a work of devotion’. It is much more than a ‘sum of its parts’. It is a celebration of nature and, as such, it works through cumulative energy. Your awe in the face of the array of plants you choose is apparent and the depth of your feeling profound. A Treasury of Plants is a beautiful, extremely impressive acknowledgement of the wonder of nature and your relation to it. It’s passionately and skilfully written and a collection to which one will return time after time.”
“This poetic study of plants conjures up wonderful images to delight the reader in the cold winter months – particularly gardeners, dreaming of a new spring in their armchair by the fire.”
THE TWELVE SENSES
“Our senses: the means by which we come to experience the world about us and within us. But why twelve, not five? Because viewing the world through five senses alone misses out so much of what we actually sense and experience.”
CONTENTS
Touch – The Life Sense – Self-Movement – Balance – Smell – Taste – Sight – Warmth – Hearing – Speech – Thought – Self
THE LIFE SENSE
Spread all over. Inseparable
From Touch. Baby knows
Well enough. Wakes and cries
Its hunger, thirst, discomfort.
Settles to sucking once
Reunited with the breast.
Then sleeps, so all’s well
Afloat on the Milky Way,
A Spirit-Child not quite
Touched down and as yet
To discover all it means
Growing up, a human being.
THE SOUL SENSES
The World comes to meet us,
Greet us, teach and tempt us.
Who can help, sometimes, but
Lose their upright, become entangled,
Or giddy, fall flat in the headlong
Rush to sample this and that?
Eyes look, like, and blunder in;
Warmth flares to passion to have
And hold. If nothing else, then
Pain with its myriad sharp reminders
Recalls us to our senses, meaning
Our foundational sense prepared
Over countless ages: the ineffable
Balance of the body’s inner warmth.
“The twelve senses presented here give us a far more rounded picture of who we are. It’s an expanded perspective which better equips us to understand the world – to see into the life of things, as Wordsworth put it – and to be better prepared to see our way through the challenges and opportunities of the digital age.”
COMMON WEALTH
“One of the book’s gifts is its feel for displaced humanity. The author’s empathy is with the poor and dispossessed, and the place in our hearts, he implies, which yearns for a free-spirited relationship with nature and a niche of land to tend; our primordial ‘common wealth’.”
CONTENTS
This England … – Avebury 1 – Avebury 2 – Blessed Continuance – Stoney Littleton Long Barrow – The Garden – Set Aside – The Death of Pan – The Christian Good – Ora et Labora – High Matters of State – The Flowery Mead – At the Cutting Edge – Early Renaissance Garden – Legendary Magnificence – World Wonder – Meanwhile … – To Whom Belongs the Land? – No Limits – Cogito Ergo Sum – A Parting Blast – Unfrozen? – A Small Matter – Prospect Painting c1710 – Half-Clothed – Old England – Classical Landscape Garden – The Wealth of Nations – The House – Lament for a Way of Life Destroyed – First Fruits – Unholy Pentecost – A Sorry Tale – Nature – Three Poems for Anne Marie – Look to the Land – And did those Feet? – Site Visit – The Picnic – Lower Mill Farm – Sleeping Beauty – Common Wealth
TO WHOM BELONGS THE LAND?
To whom belongs the Land
Once a King’s head falls,
Once the Nation’s delivered from civil war
And a Commonwealth is born?
To whom belongs the Land
Once the poor combine to dig, manure the Waste,
The Wilderness as yet in common
And labour no curse,
Only the hand which grasps to take and own?
To whom belongs the Land,
Its wealth a slumbering giant
To be roused by its sons and daughters
In collective cultivation for the general good?
The sun of Reason,
Of Love rising; hand-in-hand
With Christ indwelling to lift up
The creation from the bondage of the Fall.
To whom belongs the Land
Once the poor are freed
From crowns, landlords,
Meddling clerics,
And the World’s turned upside-down?
A PARTING BLAST
Wealth streams to Britain’s shores,
Periphery to centre. It means
Winners and losers. One’s sovereignty
At risk from another’s use of force.
Labour enslaved, whether shipped
From Africa or hired from the commons
Of the landless poor. The Second Coming
Has not come. Love, Reason, Christ
Rising in us to collective self-reliance.
World-wide trade’s the grander option,
That we may the better set forth and show
The pride of our hearts in decking our proud
Carcasses and feeding our greedy guts
With superfluous unnecessary curiosities.
(A parting blast from one unreconciled.)
READERS’ COMMENTS
“I was really impressed with Common Wealth … there are real depths to it. It know it is really difficult for good poetry to get the attention it deserves, but I hope, somehow, Common Wealth breaks through.”
“I am SO enjoying Common Wealth. It is so broad in scope, yet so specific in its messages and so powerful in its effect. And all this through your wonderful use of words.”
For copies of this book, email the author at daviddon@myphone.coop
A PAINSWICK PANORAMA
A grand poetic sweep through England’s chequered history, explored through the concerns of a village that also plays a part in the author’s own life story.
CONTENTS
Kimsbury Camp – Civilisation – Barbarians – Back to Beginnings – The Twilight of the Gods – Earl Godwin – Ernisi – Domesday – Pain Fitzjohn – The Wild Wood – Law and Order – The Good Old Days – Market Day – The King’s Power – Civil War (1264) – Misrule: A Fairy Tale – John Talbot – Grievances – Widowed – Court Baron – Precedent – Clarifying the Fog – A Bitter Pill? – Fragrance – Still Born – Arthur and Honora – Painswick Park – Elizabeth and Edward’s ‘Natural Son’ – Honora Grenville – No One to Say No – 1528: The Fateful Year – For Sale: 400 Oaks – So Much in Debt – Men of the Grasping Order – Finale: 1540-42 – Dilapidations – Thomas Gardner – Sunday 10th October 2021 – A Lost Child – 1555-56 – A Manumissio – Heriot – Goods for Sale – A Great Dearth – Civil Ferment – A Malignant – Acson’s Successor – Thomas Wild – Sir Ralph to be Arrested – On Painswick Hill – The Siege of Gloucester – We have no Home – On Brookthorpe Hill – The Civil War enters Painswick – Aftermath – George Dorwood – The Restoration – Glimpses 1683-85 – Turbulence 1685 – The Society of Friends – The Friends 1687-89 – Non-Conformists from 1705 – Change and Return – Mr West and the Baptist Chapel – Painswick Stream – Painswick’s Mills – Prosperity to Closure – And the Clothiers? – From 1683 – Frederick Gyde – Rev Herbert and Mrs Seddon – Conflicts – Obsolete? – Mrs Williams and the Working Men’s Club and Institute – Margaret and Lucy Hyett – Edwin Francis Gyde – Gyde House – Come Inside: c1955 – Winter – So Much More to Explore – Retrace – Christmas Eve – Christmas Day – And a Few Days Later – A Summer’s Evening in June – Garden Fete – Beech Hedge – Ron Lamort – So back to 1955: Questions – Battle On – A Safe Pair of Hands – From 1725 – Sunday Schools 1784-86 – Law and Order – Order? 1825 – A Master of the Free School – A Centenary Year 1825 – An Interlude, July 1823 – The Girls, from 1816 – Comings and Goings 1837-44 – Meanwhile 1840-46 – A Small Fortune – That Bullseye 1847 – The Golden Decade 1853-67 – All Needs Met? – The Other Half – Never Enough! – Compulsory Education, 1870 – Don’t be left behind 1876 – The True Ends of Education – Three Notable Painswick Teachers – My Story – Up for Rent – Croft School 1973 – Sun and Shadow – Afterword: Where’s the World Headed?
GRIEVANCES
Oppression: a way of life in Merry England.
It’s how the ruling class sustained itself.
Taxing your every so-called ‘right’, whether
Grazing your animals on the commons
Or collecting wood and brush both there
And on your own strip of land, for fire
To cook with, keep you warm; or any wheat
Or hay you reaped on the Lord’s demesne
Or any surplus saved to sell at market.
And if you had the added misfortune
To be a woman and your husband died,
There’d be death tax to pay to your good Lord
And the patch of earth you had been living on
Would then be forfeit to your next of kin.
So you’d be destitute, obliged to them
To take you in or be cast onto the mercies
Of Lady Fortune and whatever scraps
Of comfort She favoured you to win.
WIDOWED
Hear the outcry!
The grief, the helpless
Rage. John Talbot,
Returned from the wars
With only five alive
Of the sixteen Painswick men
Who had set out with him.
He’s taken to task
By their distraught widows.
The Lord, made to listen.
This quarrelsome
Leader of men,
Inveterate fighter,
Terror of the French,
Daring to the point
Of recklessness,
Brought to account
By those now bereaved
And facing ruin (…)
READERS’ COMMENTS
“It really is a notable achievement. Two things particularly impress me: the way you manage to sustain the poetical nature of the work and the research into which you have gone to build the poem.”
“Your poem gathers ‘characters’ as it goes along. They come flocking in as the poem comes closer to its conclusion and the present age. These influential people latterly are the teachers rather than the aristocrats and entrepreneurs and I find it very stimulating that the poem moves increasingly to the role of the school and its teachers at the heart of the developing community. The section covering the attempted felling of Four Hundred Oaks I keep re-reading and enjoying!”
For copies of this book, email the author at daviddon@myphone.coop
A SEASON’S TREASURY
“These poems, written over a period of 30 years, are essentially poems of celebration: of immersion in the seasonal round that “resonate with quiet joy” as one reviewer observed.”
CONTENTS
New Year’s Day – March Wind – Seagulls in Spring – Ash Wednesday – Bluebells – May Morning – Cows in the Meadow – Little Owl – Skylark – May Evening – Who Gives the World? – Poem in June – Beech Tree – June Night – Summer Solstice – St John’s Tide – Midsummer – A Midsummer Night’s Wind – Midsummer’s Day – After the Storm – July Evening – From Song to Sustenance – August Hedgerow – September Morning – Ploughing – Autumn Equinox – Autumn Poem – Michaelmas – Autumn Morning – Season of Lullabies – October – Time’s Up – The Fire’s Glow – Hallowe’en – November – Winter is Coming – Midwinter – Winter Solstice – Trial by Water – More Floods – Sun in January – Walk in January – February – As the Frost Retreats – Light in February – Mist in February – Late Snow – Spring Poem – Compost Heap – Room to Breathe – Rainbow Portent – Death of a Fox – St John’s – Sky Blue – Sumer Morning Paddle – Summer Rain – Midsummer Garden – Summer Evening – Beach Scene – Origins – Shooting Stars – Autumn Equinox – Autumn and Sleep – Autumn – All Saints’ Day – A Walk in January – Snowfall – The Golden Thread – No Shadow of a Doubt – Evening
A WALK IN JANUARY
We descend the ridge. The wide-angle view
Opens up miles in every direction.
The slanting winter sunlight casts
Our shadows so tall and thin
They stretch far down the slope.
Everywhere I look, there’s glint and gleam:
In the scraps of hawthorn hedge
And its litter of broken branches,
In the quiet stones at the field’s edge,
In the spring, puddling its long way
Down to the farmer’s lake below
And his orchard draped with mistletoe.
Stillness. Wide spaces. Sheep
Noses down to the cold wet earth.
Excited starling chatter from a stand
Of silver birch. And here’s the mystery:
That all’s in process, ever-changing
Yet somehow always complete.
Past, present and future coming on
And we, too, immersed in this,
And also free, as if we stood in a Now
Where all as far as our eyes can see
Were immersed in us and living there
As surely as our breath and blood:
The stones, the spring, the birds, the trees.
EVENING
Is a time in itself:
Neither day nor night,
A door quietly opened.
Glimpses beyond the day’s strivings
Flit into view: the breeze
Stirring the leaves,
The still fields.
For a moment you stand
Balanced, as the heart
Is recalled, expands
You join hands with the life in you,
There is no end to it
READERS’ COMMENTS
“David Donaldson’s A Seasons’ Treasury is life-enhancing. (…) His relationship to nature is so sensitive and intimate that it is at times almost mystical. (…) These are poems of the highest order. (…) My own knowledge of the countryside and my own loving relationship with stones and birds and trees have been greatly enhanced by David’s wonderful poetry.”
“The whole collection, unified by a sense of the ‘wonder’ of nature, its mysterious workings, and the themes of silence, and the certainties of the seasonal cycle, seems to me to require a complete reading each time the book is taken up. (…) It’s as though you experience a curative cleansing process when you visit certain places, or somehow enter the natural world, and it’s this peace and awe that you communicate so authentically in this collection. Great stuff!”
