April Poetry

April

I open wide to the portals of the Spring
	To welcome the procession of the flowers,
With their gay banners, and the birds that sing
	Their song of songs from their aerial towers.
I soften with my sunshine and my showers
	The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide
Into the hearts of men; and with the hours
	Upon the Bull with wreathéd horns I ride.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82)
The Poet’s Calendar

The Days of April

On the return of April some few days
Before it comes when every thing looks new
And woods where primroses burn in a blaze
of fire And sallows in the woods made new
Seen blazeing out in blossoms not a few
But bushes smothered over what a change
Is turned upon their brightness passing by
The very birds the pies and crows and Jays
Look downward on their bloom from dark trees high
And wood larks dropping from the rich blue sky
Winner and whistle to their very roots
Sitting beneath a canophy of gold
And wood anemonies the sharp air suits
Their sheltered blooms with beauties manifold
Daisies burn April grass with silver flies
And pilewort in the green lane blazes out
Enough to burn the fingers neath the briars
Where village Boys will scrat dead leaves about
To look for pootys — every eye admires
The lovely pictures that the spring brings out
Meadows of bowing cowslips what mind tires
To see them dancing in the emerald grass
And trawling chrystal brook as clear as glass
Laughing groaning uggling on for miles
That waves the silver blades of swimming grass
Upon the surface while the glad sun smiles
Such are the sights the showers and sunshine bring
To three or four bright days in the first of spring…

John Clare (1793-1864)