With its showers and sunny spells, its breezes –chilly at times – and patches of warmth, April 2023 was a gloriously classic April.
When April comes, primrose and bluebell, celandine and dead nettle rise up. My mood lifts and the desire to get outside and go for long walks stirs with renewed vigour …
April also causes my mind to turn to the opening lines of one of the most famous poems in the English language:
“When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then people long to go on pilgrimages.”
These are the opening lines of The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. They were written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century.
Rather than open with some dramatic incident “to get the reader’s attention”, Chaucer opens, in typical Medieval fashion, with a narrative exposition. In this instance, he patiently evokes a typical April scene with its “sweet showers”, “flowers”, the “sweet breath” of the west wind, and the singing of birds.
To portray this scene, Chaucer uses the habitual present tense: “the showers fall/ And pierce the drought of March.” The habitual present is used to describe actions or events that occur regularly.
The fact that Chaucer used the habitual present to describe the weather and events of April suggest that, as far as Chaucer was concerned, this was how April always had been and always would be. The nature of April is an unchanging phenomenon. The use of the habitual present creates a reassuring certainty.
A striking thing about Chaucer’s description of April is that we’ve just experienced a very similar April over 600 years later in the south of England. What Chaucer wrote then about April, he could write now.
This is not only reassuring, it also comes as a relief. There is an air of nervousness and concern now as we enter each month and season. We know that the climate is changing and that huge problems loom as a result.
Therefore, at the start of each month, I find myself wondering, “Will the weather be normal for this month or will there be something worryingly ‘odd’ about it? And, if there is something ‘odd’ about it, is this a blip or an emerging pattern that acts as a harbinger for climate catastrophe?”
Just over 600 years ago, Chaucer was able to assert confidently and without concern, “When in April the sweet showers fall/And pierce drought of March to the root … people long to go on pilgrimages.”
He had no reason to think the that things could be otherwise. But now, we can’t be so confident. Will there come a time when such an April would be just a memory? Will there come a time when a latter-day Chaucer would have to write about such an April in the past tense:
“When in April the sweet showers fell
And pierced the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins were bathed in liquor of such power
…….
Then people longed to go on pilgrimages.”
Putting it into the past tense is unsettling. The original description in the habitual present powerfully connects us, in the modern world, with the people in the Medieval world.
The description in the past tense however, disconnects us. It makes us wonder what kind of world we would be living in to have to be referring to such an April as a thing of the past.
Where have the “sweet showers” gone? What’s happened to the “sweet breath” of the west wind? Do the birds no longer sing? Is it too hot to go outside so that the last thing people would want to do is go on a long walk?
For now, though, at least as far as the south of England was concerned, Chaucer’s evocation of a classic April scene remains as apt now as it did all those years ago. Long may that continue.
Note: The extract from “The Canterbury Tales” comes from the 1977 Penguin Classics edition, translated by Nevill Coghill.
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