MARCH.
Now husbandman and hinds in March prepare,
And order take, against the teeming year,
Survey their lands, and keep a good look out
To get their fields and farms well fenc’d about.
Now careful gard’ners, during sunny days,
Admit to greenhouses the genial rays:
Vines, espaliers, and standard trees demand
The pruner’s skilful eye, and ready hand;
And num’rous shoots and roots court the kind toil
Of transplantation, or another soil.
*
In the “Mirror of the Months” it is observed, that at this season a strange commotion may be seen and heard among the winged creatures, portending momentous matters. The lark is high up in the cold air before daylight, and his chosen mistress is listening to him down among the dank grass, with the dew still upon her unshaken wing. The robin, too, has left off, for a brief season, his low plaintive piping, which it must be confessed was poured forth for his own exclusive satisfaction, and, reckoning on his spruce looks and sparkling eyes, issues his quick peremptory love-call, in a somewhat ungallant and husband-like manner.
The sparrows, who have lately been sulking silently about from tree to tree, with ruffled plumes and drooping wings, now spruce themselves up till they do not look half their former size; and if it were not pairing-time, one might fancy that there was more of war than of love in their noisy squabblings.
Now, also, the ants first begin to show themselves from their subterranean sleeping-rooms; those winged abortions, the bats, perplex the eyes of evening wanderers by their seeming ubiquity; and the owls hold scientific converse with each other at half a mile distance.
Now, quitting the country till next month, we find London all alive, Lent and Lady-day notwithstanding; for the latter is but a day after all; and he must have a very countrified conscience who cannot satisfy it as to the former, by doing penance once or twice at an oratorio, and hearing comic songs sung in a foreign tongue; or, if this does not do, he may fast if he please, every Friday, by eating salt fish in addition to the rest of his fare.
During this month some birds that took refuge in our temperate climate, from the rigour of the arctic winters, now begin to leave us, and return to the countries where they were bred; the redwing-thrush, fieldfare, and woodcock, are of this kind, and they retire to spend their summer in Norway, Sweden, and other northern regions. The reason why these birds quit the north of Europe in winter is evidently to escape the severity of the frost; but why at the approach of spring they should return to their former haunts is not so easily accounted for. It cannot be want of food, for if during the winter in this country they are able to subsist, they may fare plentifully through the rest of the year; neither can their migration be caused by an impatience of warmth, for the season when they quit this country is by no means so hot as the Lapland summers; and in fact, from a few stragglers or wounded birds annually breeding here, it is evident that there is nothing in our climate or soil which should hinder them from making this country their permanent residence, as the thrush, blackbird, and other of their congeners, actually do. The crane, the stork, and other birds, which used formerly to be natives of our island, have quitted it as cultivation and population have extended; it is probable, also, that the same reason forbids the fieldfare and redwing-thrush, which are of a timorous, retired disposition, to make choice of England as a place of sufficient security to breed in.[73]
In this month commences the yeaning season of those gentle animals whose clothing yields us our own, and engages in its manufacture a large portion of human industry and ingenuity. The poet of “The Fleece” beautifully describes and admonishes the shepherd of the accidents to which these emblems of peace and innocence are exposed, when “abroad in the meadows beside of their dams.”
Spread around thy tend’rest diligence
In flow’ry spring-time, when the new-dropt lamb,
Tott’ring with weakness by his mother’s side,
Feels the fresh world about him; and each thorn,
Hillock, or furrow, trips his feeble feet:
O, guard his meek sweet innocence from all
Th’ innumerous ills, that rush around his life:
Mark the quick kite, with beak and talons prone,
Circling the skies to snatch him from the plain;
Observe the lurking crows; beware the brake,
There the sly fox the careless minute waits;
Nor trust thy neighbour’s dog, nor earth, nor sky;
Thy bosom to a thousand cares divide.
Eurus oft slings his hail; the tardy fields
Pay not their promis’d food; and oft the dam
O’er her weak twins with empty udder mourns,
Or fails to guard, when the bold bird of prey
Alights, and hops in many turns around,
And tires her also turning: to her aid
Be nimble, and the weakest, in thine arms,
Gently convey to the warm cote, and oft,
Between the lark’s note and the nightingale’s,
His hungry bleating still with tepid milk;
In this soft office may thy children join,
And charitable habits learn in sport:
Nor yield him to himself, ere vernal airs
Sprinkle thy little croft with daisy flowers.
Dyer.
[73] Aikin’s Year.