APRIL! sweet month, the daintiest of all.
Fair thee befall:
April! fond hope of fruits that lie
In buds of swathing cotton wrapt,
There closely lapt
Nursing their tender infancy--
April! that dost thy yellow, green, and blue,
Around thee strew,
When, as thou go’st, the grassy floor
Is with a million flowers depaint,
Whose colours quaint
Have diaper’d the meadows o’er--
April! at whose glad coming zephyrs rise
With whisper’d sighs,
Then on their light wings brush away,
And hang amid the woodlands fresh
Their aery mesh,
To tangle Flora on her way--
April! it is thy hand that doth unlock,
From plain and rock,
Odours and hues, a balmy store,
That breathing lie on Nature’s breast,
So richly blest,
That earth or heaven can ask no more--
April! thy blooms, amid the tresses laid
Of my sweet maid,
Adown her neck and bosom flow;
And in a wild profusion there,
Her shining hair
With them hath blent a golden glow--
April! the dimpled smiles, the playful grace,
That in the face
Of Cytherea haunt, are thine:
And thine the breath, that, from the skies,
The deities
Inhale, an offering at thy shrine--
’Tis thou that dost with summons blythe and soft,
High up aloft,
From banishment these heralds bring.
These swallows, that along the air
Send swift, and bear
Glad tidings of the merry spring.
April! the hawthorn and the eglantine,
Purple woodbine,
Streak’d pink, and lily-cup and rose,
And thyme, and marjoram, are spreading,
Where thou art treading,
And their sweet eyes for thee unclose.
The little nightingale sits singing aye
On leafy spray,
And in her fitful strain doth run
A thousand and a thousand changes.
With voice that ranges
Through every sweet division
April! it is when thou dost come again,
That love is fain
With gentlest breath the fires to wake,
That cover’d up and slumbering lay,
Through many a day,
When winter’s chill our veins did slake.
Sweet month, thou seest at this jocund prime
Of the spring time,
The hives pour out their lusty young,
And hear’st the yellow bees that ply,
With laden thigh,
Murmuring the flow’ry wilds among.
MAY shall with pomp his wavy wealth unfold,
His fruits of gold,
His fertilizing dews, that swell
In manna on each spike and stem
And like a gem,
Red honey in the waxen cell.
Who will may praise him, but my voice shall be,
Sweet month for thee;
Thou that to her do’st owe thy name,
Who saw the sea-wave’s foamy tide
Swell and divide,
Whence forth to life and light she came.
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