The first days of April made me think of the way this month is described in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1394) and in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). The tones and mood are totally different, reflecting the age in which the poems were written.

Chaucer: “When April with his showers hath pierced the drought of March with sweetness to the very root, and flooded every vein with liquid power that of its strength engendereth the flower...

“Then longen folk to goon on pilgrimages...

“And specially, from every shires ende of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende...” (Original Middle English; the ‘e’s’ in ‘ende’ and ‘wende’ are pronounced like the ‘e’ in Romance languages).

T.S. Eliot: “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain...

“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.” (A reference to Dante’s Inferno.)