Then Winter folded his strong, hairy hands and looked anxiously at Spring:
“Give me a short respite!” he said. “I implore you to grant me a little delay. Give me a month, a week; give me just three poor days.”
Spring did not answer, but looked out over the valley, as though he had not heard, and loosened the green silk ribbon by which he carried his lute.
But the Prince of Winter stamped on the mountains till they shook and clenched his fists in mighty anger:
“Go back to whence you came,” he said, “or I shall turn my snows over you and bury you so deep that you will never find your way out of the valley. I shall let loose my storms till your wretched strains are drowned in their roaring. Your song shall freeze in your throat. Wherever you walk or stand, I shall follow your tracks. Whatever you call forth by day I shall slay by night.”
Spring raised his head and strode through the valley. He plucked harder at the strings of his lute and every tree in the forest bent forward to listen. The earth sighed under the snow, the waves of the river stood still and heard and then joined in the song, as they leapt towards the sea. Winter himself swallowed his anger for a moment and listened to Spring’s song:
In vain thy prayer would soften, in vain thy menace frighten;
Behind the blackest cloud-wrack, the sunbeams laugh and lighten.
It rang through the valley in long, loud, solemn tones; and Echo answered from every hill and mountain.
But Winter shook his clenched fists to the sky and shouted aloud: