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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Poets disagree about April

There's T S Eliot:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Whereas Chaucer believes it is a nice time for a trip:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The Droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye, -
So priketh hem nature in hir corage:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages -

and Robert Frost is ambivalent:

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You´re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you´re two months back in the middle of March.

Also posted on Carnival of the Insanities.

4 comments:

Steve B said...

See? Think of all the benefits of global warming! Help soften the April blow, yes?

Thinkest thou such and soeth?

Steve B said...

Here's a poem I wrote once upon a time, 'bout flowers and such.

"Late Bloomer"
http://www.divinspiration.com/articles/inspirational/19981117-15.html

miriam sawyer said...

Steve: Forsooth, I do.

Dick Stanley said...

It is the cruelest month this year. It's already ninety degrees during the day and only drops into the seventies at night.