Poetry Thursday - two views of April

April showers bring May flowers, isn't that how the saying goes? This year April has been cold and dreary - not a lot of that suddenly changing, showery weather - until along comes a heatwave! So the flowers are rushing into bloom and the tender blossoms are falling rapidly off the trees.

Contrasting views of April are offered by Chaucer and TS Eliot.

Let's start with the gloomy one, ie Eliot - from The Wasteland -

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

Chaucer's view, from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, is much more cheerful -

When April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower ….

He "goes on to write of sun and nature awakening and the mood changing so you feel jaunty and spry and ready to go on pilgrimage to thank the Saint for your survival over the winter, the crusades or the sickbed. A positive move to action to prepare yourself for the journey you are about to take (also the reader) and the excitement of meeting new folk along the way, all with a story to tell." (via)