Rescuing April

April by far is not the cruelest month- anyone who has been through a New York winter knows this. And nothing illustrates the truth of this better (while also attempting to shore up the blighted month's reputation) than a good poem.  Bards through the ages have tried to do justice to the start of the vernal season, but no one came near the lyrical craft of Geoffrey Chaucer, who codified Middle English in the year 1400, and poetically sanctified this first full month of spring for all time in just a few unforgettable, introductory words.  

Okay, admittedly 1300's England was nothing to write home about, that is, if you were even literate enough to scrawl out your name. Famine, plague, the Hundred Years' War and of course the crusades. . . . And yet there also was Chaucer and that famous first line.  

As far as April goes however, every era has its baddies and its bards. Let's travel back in time, to some of the past centuries nearer to us and see how they approached the start of spring. 

T.S Elliot of the much blighted 20th century, in his overarching, smarmy, hyper intellectual versifying way, particularly in The Wasteland, famously and rather spitefully called the period following windblown March the cruelest month, quickly imbuing sweet April, innocent, fragrant harbinger of balmier days, with all sorts of strange mythological allusions; sadness, loss, ancient fertility rites and other arcane symbols were the underpinnings of his much touted, modernist poem. But April was maligned.

Later in the century, ee cummings tried to restore the reputation of the season by calling it "mud-luscious. . . ."

Back in the mid-nineteenth century, Victorian gentleman of letters Alfred, aka Lord Tennyson, took an airier stance, though with a more patrician and less liberating view of the early season's effects, reminding us that, In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to love. . . . 

And decades before in the eighteenth century, the highland lad whom my dear old English prof liked to refer to familiarly as "Bobby" Burns- the irresistibly brogue- laden troubadour of the early romantic era- offered his own, lilting Scottish praise to the start of spring's signature bloom; it all sounds out in the lyrical, flirty dialect poem where Burns mischievously pretends to seduce the very flower of April by likening it to his love, O Were My Love Yon Lilac Fair.     

But it was Chaucer who captured the mood of the purple-petaled, showery month (rocked it, blew it over the top, knocked it out of the park!) in his prologue to "The Canterbury Tales," a cataloging in verse of life in the Middle Ages, comprised of 17,000 or so lines of perfect rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter and beginning in April. And in case you should start to ponder how to pronounce these first 18 lines of the famed prologue (see below), please refer to the video link to hear a really neat rendering of those incredible, late 14th century spoken words of a bygone mother tongue. You will be treated to some of the most engaging phrases in the language, among them one of my very favorite images describing the essential cuteness of little birdies chirping their tiny hearts out in April: 
And smale fowles maken melodye (said as: ond smahlleh foul-less mahken mel-oh-deeya, or something like that). Oh how lovely to even think, much less say it!

Honestly, could any feeling person ever resist such an utterance, not relate to it, not be moved?? Merely recalling the image of those adorable, wee "fowl" of the 14th century, singing happily away and "slepen" with their cute little open birdie's "eye" (pronounced eeya) in those musical, iambic cadences is a connection with the past, and also beats watching the news.

So here's a link to Chaucer's paean to April, recited in Middle English, the first 18 lines of The Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales," and be sure to listen for "smale fowles." It's so April.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahuT-JwxIa8

The General Prologue

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote 

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The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, 

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And bathed every veyne in swich licour 

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Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 

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Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth 

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Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 

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Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 

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Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, 

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And smale foweles maken melodye, 

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That slepen al the nyght with open ye 

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(so priketh hem nature in hir corages); 

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Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 

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And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, 

     13

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; 

     14

And specially from every shires ende 

     15

Of engelond to caunterbury they wende, 

     16

The hooly blisful martir for to seke, 

     17

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. 

P.S. If you find yourself moved to go on a pilgrimage as the season gets 
underway, get your airline tickets early. 

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