Helen Hunt Jackson

A Calendar of Sonnets: April

No days such honored days as these! When yet
 Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
 For some fair thing which should forever bide
 On earth, her beauteous memory to set
 In fitting frame that no age could forget,
 Her name in lovely April’s name did hide,
 And leave it there, eternally allied
 To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
 And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
 Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
 A holier symbol still in seal and sign,
 Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
 When Christ ascended, in the time of birth
 Of spring anemones, in Palestine.
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