An April
smoke makes a clean harvest.
I think April is the best month to be born in. One is just in time,
so to speak, to catch the first train, which is made up in this
month. My April chickens always turn out best. They get an early
start; they have rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand
the heavy dews, or withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all
nature starts with you. You have not come out of your hibernaculum
too early or too late; the time is ripe, and, if you do not keep
pace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season.
V SPRING POEMS
There is no month oftener on the tongues of the poets than April.
It is the initiative month; it opens the door of the seasons; the
interest and expectations of the untried, the untasted, lurk in it,
"From you have I been absent in the spring,"
says Shakespeare in one of his sonnets,--
"When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him."
The following poem, from Tennyson's "In Memoriam," might be headed
"April," and serve as descriptive of parts of our season:--
"Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now bourgeons 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 drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
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