The nonsense I’m telling myself in April
My NaPoWriMo Diary: Prompt Seventeen
do not adjust your set — attitude is all
Journey or Destination?
Are you going out today? To work, the school run, to walk the chronically ungrateful dog? Or maybe some other journey, big or small?
According to Chaucer (and only feel obliged to read the quote below if its musicality makes your heart sing) April is when people pick up their butts and get out on pilgrimage. (He doesn’t mention butts here, but they do feature later in the Tales).
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the root
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and teeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melody,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;From the Prologue of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
