April

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April is the fourth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. April is commonly associated with the season of spring in the Northern hemisphere and autumn in the Southern hemisphere, where it is the seasonal equivalent to October in the Northern hemisphere and vice versa.

Quotes

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

• 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!
  • Robert Browning, "Home Thoughts from Abroad"

• 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 cours y-ronne,
  And smale fowles maken melodye,
  That slepen al the night with open yë,
  (So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
  Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
  (And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)
  To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
  And specially, from every shires ende
  Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
  The holy blisful martir for to seke,
  That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, General Prologue (c. 1400), incipit (ed. Skeat)

• 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.
  • T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922), incipit

• By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
  Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
  Here once the embattled farmers stood,
  And fired the shot heard round the world.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Concord Hymn" (1837)

• Of all the months that fill the year
  Give April's month to me,
  For earth and sky are then so filled
  With sweet variety !
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, "April" in The London Literary Gazette (5 April 1823); also included in The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

• Will you not come home, brother? you have been long away,
  It's April, and blossom time, and white is the spray;
  And bright is the sun, brother, and warm is the rain, -­
  Will you not come home, brother, home to us again?
  • John Masefield, "The West Wind"

• I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills
  Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain:
  I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils,
  Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.
  • John Masefield, "Beauty"

• Praise the spells and bless the charms,
  I found April in my arms.
  April golden, April cloudy,
  Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
  April soft in flowered languor,
  April cold with sudden anger,
  Ever changing, ever true—
  I love April, I love you.
  • Ogden Nash, "Always Marry an April Girl" in Versus (1949)

• If April showers
  Should come your way,
  They bring the flowers
  That bloom in May.
  • Buddy de Sylva, "April Showers"

• 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!
  • William Watson, "April"

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 38-39.

• When April winds
  Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush
  Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up,
  Opened in airs of June her multitude
  Of golden chalices to humming birds
  And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.
  • William Cullen Bryant, The Fountain

• Old April wanes, and her last dewy morn
  Her death-bed steeps in tears; to hail the May
  New blooming blossoms 'neath the sun are born,
  And all poor April's charms are swept away.
  • John Clare, The Village Minstrel and Other Poems, The Last of April

• Every tear is answered by a blossom,
  Every sigh with songs and laughter blent,
  Apple-blooms upon the breezes toss them.
  April knows her own, and is content.
  • Susan Coolidge, April

• Now the noisy winds are still;
  April's coming up the hill!
  All the spring is in her train,
  Led by shining ranks of rain;
  Pit, pat, patter, clatter,
  Sudden sun and clatter patter!
  * * * * *
  All things ready with a will,
  April's coming up the hill!
  • Mary Mapes Dodge, Now the Noisy Winds are Still

• The April winds are magical,
  And thrill our tuneful frames;
  The garden-walks are passional
  To bachelors and dames.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, April

• Oh, the lovely fickleness of an April day!
  • W. H. Gibson, Pastoral Days, Spring

• Make me over, Mother April,
  When the sap begins to stir!
  When thy flowery hand delivers
  All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
  And thy great heart beats and quivers,
  To revive the days that were.
  • Richard Hovey, April

• For April sobs while these are so glad
  April weeps while these are so gay,—
  Weeps like a tired child who had,
  Playing with flowers, lost its way.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Verses, April

• The children with the streamlets sing,
  When April stops at last her weeping;
  And every happy growing thing
  Laughs like a babe just roused from sleeping.
  • Lucy Larcom, The Sister Months

• I love the season well
  When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
  Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
  The coming on of storms.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, An April Day, line 6

• Sweet April! many a thought
  Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
  Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
  Life's golden fruit is shed.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, An April Day, Stanza 8

• Sweet April-time—O cruel April-time!
  Year after year returning, with a brow
  Of promise, and red lips with longing paled,
  And backward-hidden hands that clutch the joys
  Of vanished springs, like flowers.
  • Dinah Craik, April.

• The first of April, some do say
  Is set apart for All Fools' Day;
  But why the people call it so,
  Nor I, nor they themselves, do know.
  • Poor Robin's Almanac (1760), "All Fools' Day".

• The lyric sound of laughter
  Fills all the April hills,
  The joy-song of the crocus,
  The mirth of daffodils.
  • Clinton Scollard, April Music.

• When well apparell'd April on the heel
  Of limping winter treads.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act I, scene 2, line 27.

• When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
  Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnet XCVIII.

• Spongy April.
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act IV, scene 1, line 65.

• Sweet April's tears,
  Dead on the hem of May
  • Alexander Smith, A Life Drama, scene 8, line 308.

• A gush of bird-song, a patter of dew,
  A cloud, and a rainbow's warning,
  Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue—
  An April day in the morning.
  • Harriet Prescott Spofford, April.

• Sweet April showers
  Do bring May flowers.
  • Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, Chapter XXXIX.

• Again the blackbirds sing; the streams
  Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams,
  And tremble in the April showers
  The tassels of the maple flowers.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, The Singer, Stanza 20.