Sweet April showers
Do spring May flowers.
- Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry,
1557
I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:
Of April, May, or June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of the bridal cakes.
- Robert Herrick, Hesperides, 1648
When the April wind wakes the call for the soil, I hold the plough
as my only hold upon the earth, and, as I follow through the fresh
and fragrant furrow, I am planted with every foot-step, growing,
budding, blooming into a spirit of spring.
- Dallas Lore Sharp, 1870-1929
The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the back yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree--
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
- Sara Teasdale, April
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
The first of April, some do say,
Is set apart for All Fools' Day.
But why the people call it so,
Nor I, nor they themselves do know.
But on this day are people sent
On purpose for pure merriment.
- Poor Robin's Almanac, 1790
No days such honored days as these! While yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
- Helen Hunt Jackson, Calendar of Sonnets - April, 1875
Flower god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,
Cold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles,
Here I wander in April
Cold, grey-headed; and still to my
Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,
Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant;
Spring, flower-planter in meadows,
Child-conductor in willowy
Fields deep dotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses:
Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity:
O child, happy are children!
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Flower God, God of the Spring, 1890
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze
unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round
the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent
sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward
creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. -
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn
April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.
- William Shakespeare
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Spring
In Celtic tradition, the night of April 30 was thought of as the darkest
of the year, when witches flew to frighten, spawning evil throughout
the land. In response, people pounded on kettles, slammed doors,
cracked whips, rang church bells and made all the noise they could
to scare off the corruption they imagined to be moving on the moist
air. They lit bonfires and torches and witch- proofed their houses
with spring boughs. Such vigils were kept throughout the night until
the rising of the May-dawn.
- May
Day
Certain miracles that I beheld there have haunted my memory
ever since: a gray April morning of sirocco, when the almond
blossoms, the flaming tulips, the young green of the vines, hung
as if painted on the motionless air; a summer night when the
roses had an unearthly pallor under a half-eaten moon, whose
ghostliness was somehow one with their perfume and with the
phosphorescence of dew tipping their petals; a day when the
trees stood part submerged in fog, into which leaves dropped
slowly, slowly, one after another, and sank out of sight.
- H. G. Dwight, Gardens
and Gardening, Atlantic Monthly, 1912
An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
- Emily Dickinson, Nature: April
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play:
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 98
Late April and you are three; today
We dug your garden in the yard.
To curb the damage of your play,
Strange dogs at night and the moles tunneling,
Four slender sticks of lath stand guard
Uplifting their thin string.
So you were the first to tramp it down.
And after the earth was sifted close
You brought your watering can to drown
All earth and us. But these mixed seeds are pressed
With light loam in their steadfast rows.
Child, we've done our best.
- W. D. Snodgrass
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Even though they’re best known for a kinship to their sign’s symbol of
the fierce and headstrong bull, the Taurus also possesses a warmhearted,
romantic side. Balancing their practical, dependable nature is a strong
aesthetic for beautiful things, pleasure and comfort. Cater to the Taurus’s
down—to—earth (and sometimes thorny) disposition, while still indulging
their appreciation for nature’s exquisite beauty, with striking