A Calendar of Sonnets: April

No days such honored days as these! While 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.