Sweet April showers
Do bring May flowers.

Sweet April showers
Do bring May flowers.

The children with the streamlets sing,
When April stops at last her weeping;
And every happy growing read more

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.

Sweet April-time--O cruel April-time!
Year after year returning, with a brow
Of promise, and red lips with read more

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.

For April sobs while these are so glad
April weeps while these are so gay,--
Weeps like read more

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.

Oh, the lovely fickleness of an April day!

Oh, the lovely fickleness of an April day!

Now the noisy winds are still;
April's coming up the hill!
All the spring is in her read more

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!

Sweet April's tears,
Dead on the hem of May.

Sweet April's tears,
Dead on the hem of May.

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
Of wheat, rye, barley, fetches, oats, and pease;
Thy turfy read more

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
Of wheat, rye, barley, fetches, oats, and pease;
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep;
Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves,
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lasslorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;
And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard,
Where thou thyself dost air--the queen o' th' sky,
Whose wat-ry arch and messenger am I,
Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace,
Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,
To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain.
Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.

Old April wanes, and her last dewy morn
Her death-bed steeps in tears; to hail the May
read more

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.