“Out, all my mighty storms! Out with you, out! Burst down upon the valley and shatter and destroy all this! Rush over the hills and snap every tree in the forest! Overturn the mountains, if you can, and crush yonder green mountebank beneath them!”
Out rushed the storm; and the snow came. It was awful weather. The trees creaked and crashed and fell, the river overflowed its banks, the foam of the waves spurted right up to the sky, great avalanches of snow poured down the mountain-slope.
But Spring went his way through the valley and sang, in ever fuller and stronger tones:
Let all thy loud winds bluster, let all thy tempest bellow;
Let all thy white, bright snow-birds loose, across the meadow flying!
Behold my foot is on the bridge and all the ice-flowers dying!
Thou knowest thy power in the vale has met its conquering fellow.
“Better than that!” shouted Winter. “Roar, storm; whirl, snow; lash, rain; beat, hail!”
And the storm roared louder; and the snow whirled down. It grew as dark as though the sun, the moon and all the stars had been put out. Great blocks of stone rolled down over the valley; the mountains shook and split. It was as though the end of the world had come.
But high through the murk shone Spring’s green garb; and louder than storm and thunder rang his song. Earth and air and water sang with him: the poorest blade of grass beneath the snow, the crow in the wood, the worm in the mould, each of them joined in the song according to its power. Even the trees that fell in the forest under the onslaught of the storm confessed Spring in the hour of their death: