APRIL

THE stranger warmth of the young sun obeying,
Look! little heads of green begin to grow,
And hidden flowers have dared their tops to show
Where late such droughty dusts were rudely playing.
It's not the month, but all the world's a-maying!
Come then with me, I'll take you, for I know
Where the first hedgethorns and white windflowers blow:
We two alone, that goes without the saying.

The month has treacherous clouds and moves in fears.
This April shames the month itself with smiles:
In whose new eyes I know no heaven of tears,
But still serene desire and between whiles,
So great a look that even April's grace
Makes only marvel at her only face.

~Hilaire Belloc

Allegory of April: Triumph of Venus (detail),
by Francesco Cossa. Fresco, 1476-84; Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara

Communism

“UNDER communism we should have all the worst spiritual effects of industrial capitalism extended and emphasized because their tyranny would be universal. . . . When you destroy the family and the sanctity of the individual, when you make war on the tradition of human culture, you are making war on the Image of God. And because you are making war in the Image of God, which is Man, with his human dignity and free will, you find yourself at once at war with God Himself. It is not an accident that communism should produce wholesale massacre, arson, torture, and the destruction of all lovely things. A perverse theory produces perverse acts. The story has been told over and over again but it can never be told too often.”

“THOSE who rely on communism as a remedy will be in a worse case than if they had not tried any remedy at all, for communism must necessarily break down, but not till it has done vast harm.”

~Hilaire Belloc: The Way Out