For a totally different (or is it?) perspective on April, here is T.S. Eliot's
long poem, The Waste Land , one of the most important poems of the
twentieth century, which helped usher in the modernist period. It's
famously cryptic and difficult (qualities the modernists like Eliot, Pound,
and Joyce valued), but it's powerful even when half-understood, and this may
even be the point. If you're interested in exploring the poem further,
here are a couple of websites, which provide commentary and hypertext versions
with built-in notes.
THE WASTE LAND
(1922)
T.S. Eliot
"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere,
et
cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we
stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And
drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen,
echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me
out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south
in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of
this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20
You
cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun
beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no
sound of water.
Only There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red
rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding
behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful
of dust. 30
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth
girl."
--Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your
hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking
into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer .
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here,
said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. 50
Here
is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant,
and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see.
I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in
a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under
the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone
so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before
his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth
kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped
him, crying "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! 70
"That
corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will
it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence,
that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable,--mon
frere!"
TO FRANCIS JAMMES
By Robert Bridges
'TIS April again in my garden, again the grey stone-wall
Is prankt with yellow alyssum and lilac aubrey-cresses;
Half-hidden the mavis caroleth in the tassely birchen tresses
And awhile on the sunny air a cuckoo tuneth his call:
Now cometh to mind a singer whom country joys enthral,
Francis Jammes, so grippeth him Nature in her caresses
She hath steep'd his throat in the honey'd air of her wildernesses
With beauty that countervails the Lutetian therewithal.
You are here in spirit, dear poet, and bring a motley group,
Your friends, afore you sat stitching your heavenly trousseau--
The courteous old road-mender, the queer Jean Jacques Rousseau,
Columbus, Confucius, all to my English garden they troop,
Under his goatskin umbrella the provident Robinson Crusoe,
And the ancestor dead long ago in Domingo or Guadaloupe.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from In Memoriam
CXV
Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every
maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets
blow.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes
a lovelier hue,
And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless
song.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter
down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening
gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood;
that live their lives
From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and
my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.
Home-Thoughts from Abroad
By Robert Browning
I.
OH, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
II.
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary
dew
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
Song
By William Watson
April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
April, that mine ears
Like a lover greetest,
If I tell thee, sweetest,
All my hopes and fears,
April, April,
Laugh thy golden laughter,
But, the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!
Over the Land is April
By Robert Louis Stevenson
OVER the land is April,
Over my heart a rose;
Over the high, brown mountain
The sound of singing goes.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain,
Love, do you hear me sing?
By highway, love, and byway
The snows succeed the rose.
Over the high, brown mountain
The wind of winter blows.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain
I sound the song of spring,
I throw the flowers of spring.
Do you hear the song of spring?
Hear you the songs of spring?
April
By Herbert Read
To the fresh wet fields
and the white
froth of flowers
Came the wild errant
swallows with a scream.
Early Spring
By John Clare
Winter is past--the little bee resumes
Her share of sun & shade & oer the lea
Hums its first hymnings to the flowers perfumes
& wakes a sense of gratfulness in me
The little daisey keeps its wonted pace
Ere march by april gets disarmd of snow
A look of joy opes on its smiling face
Turnd to that power that suffers it to blow
Ah pleasant time as pleasing as ye be
One still more pleasing, hope reserves for me
Where suns unsetting one long summer shine
Flowers endless bloom where winter neer destroys
O may the good mans righteous end be mine
As I may witness these unfading joys
from John Davidson, "Spring"
II
Certain, it is not wholly wrong
To hope that yet the skies may ring
With the due praises that belong
To April over all the Spring:
If one could only make a song
The birds would wish to sing.
The beggar starts his pilgrimage;
And kings their tassel-gentles fly;
The labourer earns a long day's wage;
The knight, a star of errantry,
With some lost princess for a page
Strays about Arcady.
Now fetching water in the dusk
The maidens linger by the wells;
The ploughmen cast their homespun husk,
And, while old Tuck his chaplet tells,
Themselves in spangled fustian busk,
And garters girt with bells.
Maid Marian's kirtle, somewhat old,
A welt of red must now enhance;
Oho! ho ho! in silk and gold
The gallant hobby horse shall prance;
Sing hey, for Robin Hood the bold;
Heigh ho, the morris-dance!
Oh foolish fancy, feebly strong!
To England shall we ever bring
The old mirth back? Yes, yes; nor long
It shall be till that greater Spring;
And some one yet may make a song
The birds would like to sing.
ee cummings
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's spring
and the goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
