April

April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days.

April in poetry

Poets often identify April with the end of winter, but they don't necessarily agree on what that means:

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• Adage:

:April showers bring May flowers

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• In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer found only cause for celebration:

:Whan that April with his showres soote (that is, sweet)

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:The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,

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:And bathed every veine in swich licour,

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:Of which vertu engendred is the flowr; (ll. 1-4)

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::Modernized for The Norton Anthology of English Literature

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• T. S. Eliot, on the other hand, opened The Waste Land with an ironic glance at Chaucer:

:April is the cruellest month, breeding

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:Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

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:Memory and desire, stirring

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:Dull roots with spring rain.

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• Spring - Edna St. Vincent Millay

:To what purpose, April, do you return again?

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:Beauty is not enough.

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:You can no longer quiet me with the redness

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:Of little leaves opening stickily.

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:I know what I know.

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:The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

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:The spikes of the crocus.

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:The smell of the earth is good.

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:It is apparent that there is no death.

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:But what does that signify?

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:Not only under ground are the brains of men

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:Eaten by maggots.

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:Life in itself

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:Is nothing,

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:An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

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:It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

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:April

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:Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

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