May to April

Without your showers, I breed no flowers,

    Each field a barren waste appears;

If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep,

    They take such pleasures in your tears.

As your decay made room for May,

    So I must part with all that’s mine:

My balmy breeze, my blooming trees

    To torrid suns their sweets resign!

O’er April dead, my shades I spread:

    To her I owe my dress so gay—

Of daughters three, it falls on me

    To close our triumphs on one day:

Thus, to repose, all Nature goes;

    Month after month must find its doom:

Time on the wing, May ends the Spring,

    And Summer dances on her tomb!