|  This
week our topic is April Showers. We have had rain as a topic before,
but this is a more limited view of precipitation, and one that
usually more optimistic – good rain, as opposed to the cold wet
stuff!
Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343
– 1400) begins the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprille
with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Here, ‘shoures’ is
showers; ‘sote’ is sweet; ‘droghte’ is drought; ‘perced to the
rote’ is pierced to the root; ‘veyne’ is vein; ‘swich’ is such;
‘licour’ is moisture; ‘vertu’ here means quickening power; ‘engendred’
is produced; and ‘flour’ is flower.
This is the underlying
idea to all of our poems and songs about the rain in April. Thomas
Tusser (c.1524 – 1580) in April’s Husbandry wrote
Sweet April showers
Do spring May flowers.
 Tusser
was born at Rivenhall. He attended Eton School, and then entered
Trinity Hall in Cambridge University, until sickness compelled
him to leave. He then spent ten years at court in the service
of William Paget before marrying and settling down to farm at
Cattiwade in Suffolk on the Essex border. There he composed his
Hundred Good Pointes of Husbandrie, which he later expanded
to five hundred. This book ran through many editions; it was still
used as an agricultural manual well into the 19th century. He
was apparently one of the first to recommend the rotation of crops.
Robert Southey (1774
– 1843) speaks of him as 'a good, honest, homely, useful, old
rhymer', which may be reasonably accurate in relation to his book
as poetry, but does not begin to describe its importance as a
technical document. It appears that he chose to phrase his points
as simple rhyming phrases to aid in their memorization by the
users – which in itself says important things about the value
of poetry. It is surprising how many of his quaint expressions
force themselves upon the memory; and it has been pointed out
that indeed many English proverbs can be traced back to Tusser;
for example:
Except wind stands
as never it stood,
It is an ill wind turns none to good.
This is from A
Description of the Properties of Wind. It is sad that eventually
he dies in poverty.
William Shakespeare
(1564 – 1616) had something to say about showers. This comes in
a very famous speech by the dying John of Gaunt in Act II, Scene
I of King Richard The Second. This is the speech that contains
the lines:
This happy breed
of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
But it begins:
Methinks I am a
prophet new-inspired,
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
Richard Crashaw (c.1613
– 1649) was the son of a Puritan minister, and was educated at
Cambridge. He wrote religious verse of “vibrant stylistic ornamentation
and brilliant wit.” (Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature.)
He went to France in 1644 and became a Roman Catholic; later he
went to Rome. In 1646 he published the first edition of his Steps
to the Temple: Sacred Poems, with Other Delights of the Muses.
Here are three stanzas from a poem in that, which clearly has
to do with the ‘Other Delights’: it is entitled Wishes to his
Supposed Mistress:
Life, that dares
send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes, say, ‘Welcome, friend!’
Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old Winter’s head with flowers.
Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers;
‘Bove all, nothing within that lowers.
 Thomas
Gray (1716 – 1771) came from a relatively poor family, but was
sent to Eton College, from where he went to Peterhouse in Cambridge.
He was skilled in Greek, Latin, Italian and French; but he disliked
mathematics and philosophy, and this delayed his graduation. His
most famous poems are probably An
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751,
and Ode on the
Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes
which appeared in a collection published in 1748. In 1768, he
was appointed to the professorship of history and modern languages
at Cambridge, a chair founded by George I in 1724, at the request
of the Duke of Grafton. Grafton was elected Chancellor of the
University, and to show his gratitude for the Duke’s earlier help,
Gray was asked to write an ‘Installation Ode’ which was to be
set to music. Here is a section of it:
“What is grandeur,
what is power?
Heavier toil, superior pain.
What the bright reward we gain?
The grateful memory of the good.
Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
The bee's collected treasures sweet,
Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet
The still small voice of gratitude."
Last, but by no means
least, we come to the great Al Jolson (1886 – 1950). In 1921 he
performed the song which most people would recognize as embodying
the general ideas that, as we have seen, appeared first some five
hundred years earlier, April Showers. The words were written
by Louis Silver; the music was composed by Bob DeSylva. Here is
a brief part of the lyrics:
Though April showers
may come your way,
They bring the flowers that bloom in May.
So, if it’s raining, have no regrets;
Because it isn’t raining rain, you know;
It’s raining violets.
 So,
what are we going to select as poems for this week? I have decided
to choose first a poem by Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) that he
published in 1710: A
Description of a City Shower. Swift was an interesting
man, to say the least; he is probably best known nowadays as the
author of Gulliver’s Travels, which was published in 1726.
He was born in Dublin, but he spent the earlier part of his career
in London; in 1714 he withdrew to Dublin, where he was Dean of
St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The second poem this week is by Alfred
Edward (A. E.) Housman (1859 – 1936); it is from his collection
Last Poems, published in 1922. These poems were numbered,
rather than named; this one is IX.
However, the title is often given in collections as the first
part of the opening line: The
chestnut casts his flambeaux. The final poem of the week
is by Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894): When
I am Dead. She was included in our recent piece on the
Pre-Raphaelites, where I used her poem Goblin
Market. This week’s poem is very different.
To close: here is
a short poem by Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917), Tall Nettles:
Tall nettles cover
up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
This corner of the
farmyard I like most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
I hope you enjoy this
week’s poems about one of the clearest indications of the arrival
of spring.
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