APRIL.

“The shower is past, the birds renew their songs,

And sweetly through its tears the landscape smiles.”

“April,” says the author of the “Fairie Queene,” “is Spring—the juvenile of the months, and the most feminine—never knowing her own mind for a day together. Fickle as a fond maiden with her first lover; toying it with the young sun till he withdraws his beams from her, and then weeping till she gets them back again.” April is frequently a very sweet and genial month, partly because it ushers in the May, and partly for its own sake. It is to May and June what “sweet fifteen,” in the age of woman, is to the passion-stricken eighteen, and perfect two-and-twenty. It is to the confirmed Summer, what the previous hope of joy is to the full fruition—what the boyish dream of love is to love itself. It is, indeed, the month of promises—and what are twenty performances compared with one promise? April, then, is worth two Mays, because it tells tales of May in every sigh that it breathes, and every tear that it lets fall. It is the harbinger, the herald, the promise, the prophecy, the foretaste of all the beauties that are to follow it—of all and more—of all the delights of Summer, and all the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious Autumn.” It is fraught with beauties itself, which no other month can bring before us.

“When proud, pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing.”

It is one sweet alternation of smiles, and sighs, and tears—and tears, and sighs, and smiles—till all is consummated at last in the open laughter of May.

April weather is proverbial for a mixture of the bright and gloomy. The pleasantness of the sunshiny days, with the delightful view of fresh greens and newly opened flowers, is unequaled; but they are frequently overcast with clouds, and chilled by rough, wintry blasts. This month, the most perfect image of Spring —

“Looks beautiful as when an infant is waking

From its slumbers;”

and the vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine and gentle showers, have the most powerful effects in hastening the universal springing of vegetation, whence the season derives its appellation.

The influence of the equinoctial storms frequently prevailing, causes much unpleasant weather; its opening is—

“Mindful of disaster past,

And shrinking at the northern blast,

The sleety storm returning still,

The morning hoar, the evening chill:

Reluctant comes the timid Spring,

Scarce a bee, with airy ring,

Murmurs the blossomed boughs around

That clothe the garden’s southern bound;

Scarce a sickly, straggling flower

Decks the rough castle’s rifted tower;

Scarce the hardy ivy peeps

From the dark dell’s entangled steeps,

Fringing the forests devious edge,

Half-robed, appears the privet hedge,

Or to the distant eye displays,

Weakly green, its budding sprays.”

An ancient writer beautifully describes one of those bright, transient showers which prevail at this season.

Away to that sunny nook, for the thick shower

Rushes on strikingly: ay, now it comes,

Glancing about the leaves with its first dips,

Like snatches of faint music. Joyous bird,

It mingles with thy song, and beats soft time

To thy warbling notes. Now it louder falls,

Pattering, like the far voice of leaping rills;

And now it breaks upon the shrinking clumps

With a crash of many sounds; the thrush is still,

There are sweet scents around us; the flow’ret hides,

On that green bank, beneath the leaves;

The earth is grateful to the teeming clouds,

And yields a sudden freshness to their kisses.

And now the shower slopes to the warm west,

Leaving a dewy track; and see, the big drops,

Like falling pearls, glisten in the sunny mist.

The air is clear again, and the far woods

Shine out in their early green. Let’s onward, then,

For the first blossoms peep about the path;

The lambs are nibbling the short, dripping grass,

And the birds are on the bushes.

The month of April not unfrequently introduces us to the chimney or house-swallow, known by its long, forked tail and red breast. At first, here and there only one appears glancing quickly by us, as if scarcely able to endure the cold, which Warton beautifully describes —

The swallow for a moment seen,

Skims in haste the village green.

But in a few days their number is much increased, and they sport with seeming pleasure in the warm sunshine.

Along the surface of the winding stream,

Pursuing every turn, gay swallows skim,

Or round the borders of the spacious lawn,

Fly in repeated circles, rising o’er

Hillock and fence with motion serpentine,

Easy and light. One snatches from the ground

A downy feather, and then upward springs,

Followed by others, but oft drops it soon,

In playful mood, or from too slight a hold,

When all at once dart at the falling prize.

As these birds live on insects, their appearance is a certain proof that some of this minute tribe of animals have ventured from their winter abodes.

Thomson thus describes this busy month among the feathered tribes —

Some to the holly-hedge

Nestling repair, and to the thicket some;

Some to the rude protection of the thorn

Commit their feeble offspring. The cleft tree

Offers its kind concealment to a few,

Their food its insects, and its moss their nests.

Others apart, far in the grassy dale,

Or roughening waste, their humble texture weave;

But most in woodland solitudes delight,

In unfrequented glooms, or shaggy banks,

Steep, and divided by a babbling brook,

Whose murmurs soothe them all the livelong day,

When by kind duty fixed. Among the roots

Of hazel, pendent o’er the plaintive stream,

They frame the first foundation of their domes;

Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,

And bound with clay together. Now ’tis naught

But restless hurry through the busy air,

Beat by unnumbered wings. The swallow sweeps

The slimy pool, to build the hanging house

Intent. And often, from the careless back

Of herds and flocks, a thousand tugging bills

Pluck hair and wool; and oft, when unobserved,

Steal from the barn a straw, till soft and warm,

Clean and complete, their habitation grows.

Another celebrated poet completes the picture: —

The cavern-loving wren sequestered seeks

The verdant shelter of the hollow stump;

And with congenial moss, harmless deceit,

Constructs a safe abode. On topmost boughs

The oriole, and the hoarse-voiced crow,

Rocked by the storm, erect their airy nests.

The ousel, long frequenter of the grove

Of fragrant pines, in solemn depth of shade,

Finds rest. Or mid the holly’s shining leaves,

A simple bush, the piping thrush contents;

Though in the woodland contest, he, aloft,

Trills from his spotted throat a powerful strain,

And scorns the humble quire. The wood-lark asks

A lowly dwelling, hid beneath some tuft,

Or hollow, trodden by the sinking hoof:

Songster beloved! who to the sun such lays

Pours forth as earth ne’er owns. Within the boughs

The sparrow lays her spotted eggs. The barn,

With eaves o’er-pendent, holds the chattering tribe.

Secret the linnet seeks the tangled wood,

The white owl seeks some antique ruined wall,

Fearless of rapine; or in hollow trees,

Which age has caverned, safely courts repose.

The velvet jay, in pristine colors clad,

Weaves her curious nest with firm-wreathed twigs,

And sidelong forms her cautious door; she dreads

The taloned hawk, or pouncing eagle,

Herself, with craft suspicion ever dwells.

As the singing of birds is the voice of courtship and conjugal love, the concerts of the groves begin to fill all with their various melody. In England the return of the nightingale in the spring is hailed with much joy; he sings by day as well as night; but in the daytime his voice is drowned in the multitude of performers; in the evening it is heard alone, whence the poets have always made the song of the nightingale a nocturnal serenade. The author of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” thus beautifully describes an April night, and the song of this siren: —

All is still,

A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,

Yet let us think upon the vernal showers

That gladden the green earth, and we shall find

A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

And hark! the nightingale begins his song;

He crowds, and hurries, and precipitates,

With fast, thick warble, his delicious notes,

As he were fearful that an April night

Would be too short for him to utter forth

His love-chant, and disburden his full soul

Of all his music!

I know a grove,

Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,

Which the great lord inhabits not; and so

This grove is wild with tangling underwood,

And the trim walks are broken up; and grass,

Thin grass and king-cups, grow within the paths;

But never elsewhere in one place I knew

So many nightingales. And far and near,

In wood and thicket o’er the wide grove,

They answer and provoke each other’s songs —

With skirmish and capricious passagings,

And murmurs musical and swift—jug, jug!

And one low, piping sound, more sweet than all,

Stirring the air with such a harmony

That, should you close your eyes, you might almost

Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may, perchance, behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,

Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade

Lifts up her love-torch.

Oft a moment’s space,

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,

Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon

Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky

With one sensation, and those wakeful birds

Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

As if one quick and sodden gale had swept

An hundred airy harps! And I have watched

Many a nightingale perched giddily

On blossoming twig, still swinging from the breeze,

And to that motion tune his wanton song,

Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

Milton, too, in the first of his sonnets, has a beautiful address to this success portending songster:

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray

Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,

While hours lead on the laughing month of May,

Thou with fresh hopes the lover’s heart dost fill.

The fishes are now inspired by the same enlivening influence which acts upon the rest of animated Nature, and in consequence, again offer themselves as a prey to the art of the angler, who returns to his usual haunt.

“Beneath a willow long forsook,

The fisher seeks his ’customed nook;

And bursting through the crackling sedge

That crowns the current’s caverned edge,

He startles from the bordering wood

The bashful wild-ducks early brood.”

A considerable number of plants flower in this month, which Bloomfield beautifully describes.

Neglected now the early daisy lies,

Nor thou, pale primrose, bloom’st the only prize,

Advancing Spring profusely spreads abroad

Flowers of all hues with sweetest fragrance stored,

Where’er she treads Love gladdens every plain,

Delight on tiptoe bears her lucid train;

Sweet Hope with conscious brow before her flies,

Anticipating wealth for Summer skies.

In particular, many of the fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, the flowers of which are peculiarly termed blossoms. These form a most agreeable spectacle, as well on account of their beauty, as of the promise they give of future benefits.

“What exquisite differences and distinctions, and resemblances,” exclaims Warton, “there are between all the various blossoms of the fruit-trees; and no less in their general effect, than in their separate details.

“The almond-blossom which comes first of all, and while the tree is quite bare of leaves, is of a bright blush-rose color; and when they are fully blown, the tree, if it has been kept to a compact head, instead of being permitted to straggle, looks like one huge rose, magnified by some fairy magic, to deck the bosom of some fair giantess. The various lands of plum follow, the blossoms of which are snow-white, and as full and clustering as those of the almond. The peach and nectarine, which are now preparing to put forth their blossoms, are unlike either of the above; and their sweet effect, as if growing out of the bare wall or rough wooden paling, is peculiarly pretty. They are of a deep blush color, and of a delicate bell-shape; the lips, however, divided and turning backward, to expose the interior to the cherishing sun. But, perhaps, the bloom that is richest, and most promising in its general appearance, is that of the cherry, clasping its white honors all around the long, straight branches, from heel to point, and not letting a leaf or bit of stem be seen, except the three or four leaves that come as a green finish at the extremity of each branch. The blossoms of the pears, and, loveliest of all, the apples, do not come in perfection till next month.”

It is, however, an anxious time for the possessor, as the fairest prospect of a plentiful increase is often blighted. Shakspeare draws a pathetic comparison from this circumstance, to paint the delusive nature of human expectations:

This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost!

And Milton beautifully uses the same simile:

Abortive as the first-born bloom of Spring,

Nipped with the lagging rear of Winter’s frost.

Herrick indulges in the following “fond imaginings” to blossoms:

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do you fall so fast?

Your date is not so past

But you may stay yet here awhile

To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

What! were ye born to be

An hour and half’s delight,

And so to bid good-night?

’Tis pity Nature brought ye forth,

Merely to show your worth,

And lose you quite!

But your lovely leaves where we,

May read how soon things have

Their end, though ne’er so brave;

And after they have shown their pride,

Like you away to glide

Into the grave.

The poet of the Seasons gives delightful utterance to the aspirations of many a bosom at this inspiring season:

Now from the town,

Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,

Oft let me wander o’er the dewy fields,

Where freshness breathes; and dash the trembling drops

From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze

Of sweetbriar hedges I pursue my walk;

Or taste the smell of daisy; or ascend

Some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains,

And see the country far diffused around,

One boundless blush of white empurpled shower

Of mingled blossoms, where the raptured eye

Hurries from joy to joy, and hid beneath

The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies.

The farmer is busied in sowing early sorts of grain and seeds for fodder, for which purpose dry weather is most suitable, though plentiful showers, at due intervals, are desirable for feeding the young grass and springing seeds:

“The work is done, no more to man is given,

The grateful farmer trusts the rest to Heaven;

Yet oft with anxious heart he looks around,

And marks the first green blade that breaks the ground;

In fancy sees his trembling oats uprun,

His tufted barley yellow with the sun,

Sees clouds propitious shed their timely store,

And all his harvest gathered around his door.”