In the garden the news is coming up from below, borne by those unfailing outriders of the spring, the snowdrop and the winter aconite. A modest company; but in their pennons is the assurance of the many-coloured host that is falling unseen into the vast pageant of summer and will fill the woods with the trumpets of the harebell and the wild hyacinth, and make the hedges burst into foam, and the orchard a glory of pink and white, and the ditches heavy with the scent of the meadowsweet, and the fields golden with harvest and the gardens a riot of luxuriant life. I said it was all right, chirps little red waistcoat from the fence—all the winter I've told you that there was a good time coming and now you see for yourself. Look at those flowers. Ain't they real? The philosopher in the red waistcoat is perfectly right. He has kept his end up all through the winter, and has taken us into his fullest confidence. Formerly he never came beyond the kitchen, but this winter when the snow was about he advanced to the parlour where he pottered about like one of the family. Now, however, with the great news outside and the earth full of good things to pick up, he has no time to call.
Even up in the woods that are still gaunt with winter and silent, save for the ringing strokes of the woodcutters in some distant clearing, the message is borne in the wind that comes out of the west at the dawn of the spring, and is as unlike the wind of autumn as the spirit of the sunrise is unlike the spirit of the sunset. It is the lusty breath of life coming back to the dead earth, and making these February days the most thrilling of the year. For in these expanding skies and tremors of life and unsealings of the secret springs of nature all is promise and hope, and nothing is for regret and lament. It is when fulfilment comes that the joy of possession is touched with the shadow of parting. The cherry blossom comes like a wonder and goes like a dream, carrying the spring with it, and the dirge of summer itself is implicit in the scent of the lime trees and the failing note of the cuckoo. But in these days of birth when
“Youth, inexpressibly fair, wakes like a wondering rose.”
there is no hint of mortality and no reverted glance. The curtain is rising and the pageant is all before us.
[Original]
