No days such honored days as these! While yet <br />Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide <br />For some fair thing which should forever bide <br />On earth, her beauteous memory to set <br />In fitting frame that no age could forget, <br />Her name in lovely April's name did hide, <br />And leave it there, eternally allied <br />To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget. <br />And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth, <br />Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth, <br />A holier symbol still in seal and sign, <br />Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine, <br />When Christ ascended, in the time of birth <br />Of spring anemones, in Palestine.<br /><br />Helen Hunt Jackson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-calendar-of-sonnets-april/
