It is the season of the quickest expansion, of
the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the
year. The birds sing in chorus in the spring--just as children prattle;
the brooks run full--like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop
easily--as young tears flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the
mind of a boy.
Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the
warmth of life. The old year--say what the chronologists will--lingers
upon the very lap of spring, and is only fairly gone when the blossoms
of April have strown their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the
bluebirds have chanted his requiem.
It always seems to me as if an access of life came with the melting of
the winter's snows, and as if every rootlet of grass, that lifted its
first green blade from the matted _debris_ of the old year's decay, bore
my spirit upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven.
I love to trace the break of spring step by step: I love even those long
rain-storms, that sap the icy fortresses of the lingering winter,--that
melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks,--that make
the pools heave up their glassy cerements of ice, and hurry down the
crashing fragments into the wastes of ocean.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43