Such comfort as do lusty young men feel When well-apparelled April on the heel Of limping Winter treads, even such delight Among fresh fennel buds shall you this night Inherit at my house.

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.

From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him; Yet nor the lays of birds, not the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hue, Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seemed it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play.

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. (Sonnet XCVIII)

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.