"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. "

     William Shakespeare

  

"It's spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"  -  Mark Twain   

        

"Spring has returned.  The Earth is like a child that knows poems."  ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 

"Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.  It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon."
  Oscar Wilde  
      

 

 

"April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."
  Edna St. Vincent Millay

"In Roman mythology, Flora was a goddess of flowers and the season of spring.  While she was otherwise a relatively minor figure in Roman mythology, being one among several fertility goddesses, her association with the spring gave her particular importance at the coming of springtime. Her festival, the Floralia, was held in April or early May and symbolized the renewal of the cycle of life, marked with dancing, drinking, and flowers.  Her Greek equivalent was Chloris.  Flora was married to Favonius, the wind god, and her companion was Hercules.  Due to her association with plants, her name in modern English also means plant life.  Flora achieved more prominence in the neo-pagan revival of Antiquity among Renaissance humanists than she had ever enjoyed in ancient Rome."

"And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest."
  Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

"Well-apparel'd April on the heel
Of limping Winter treads."
  William Shakespeare

And so April's post ends with a quote from Shakespeare, whose birthday falls, (or so it is believed), on April 23. I am unspeakably grateful for Shakespeare, for April, and for Spring . . "when birds do sing, Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding! Sweet lovers love the Spring!"

William Shakespeare, 

HAPPY SPRING!