The Death of our Almanac.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
[Selection for Twelve Students.]
January. Darkness and light reign alike. Snow is on the ground, cold is in the air. The winter is blossoming in frost-flowers. Old sounds are silent in the forest and in the air. Insects are dead, birds are gone, leaves have perished. So hath God wiped out the past; so hath he spread the earth, like an unwritten page, for a new year.
February. As the month wears on its silent work begins, though storms rage. The earth is hidden yet, but not dead. The sun is drawing near. He whispers words of deliverance into the ears of every sleeping seed and root that lies beneath the snow. The day opens, but the night shuts the earth with its frost-lock; but day steadily gains upon the night.
March. The conflict is more turbulent, but the victory is gained. The world awakes. There come voices from long-hidden birds. The smell of the soil is in the air. The sullen ice, retreating from open field and all sunny places, has slunk to the north of every fence and rock. The knolls and banks that face the east or south sigh for release, and begin to lift up a thousand tiny palms.
April. The singing month. Many voices of many birds call for resurrection over the graves of flowers, and they come forth. Go, see what they have lost. What have ice, and snow, and storm done unto them? How did they fall into the earth, stripped and bare? How did they come forth, opening and glorified? Is it, then, so fearful a thing to lie in the grave? In its wild career, shaking and scourged of storms through its orbit, the earth has scattered away no treasures. The Hand that governs in April governed in January. You have not lost what God has only hidden. You lose nothing in struggle, in trial, in bitter distress.
May. O Flower-month! perfect the harvests of flowers. Be not niggardly. Search out the cold and resentful nooks that refused the sun, casting back its rays from disdainful ice, and plant flowers even there. There is goodness in the worst. There is warmth in the coldest. The silent, hopeful, unbreathing sun, that will not fret or despond, but carries a placid brow through the unwrinkled heavens, at length conquers the very rocks, and lichens grow and inconspicuously blossom. What shall not Time do, that carries in its bosom Love?
June. Rest! This is the year’s bower. Sit down within it. The winds bring perfume, the forests sing to thee, the earth shows thee all her treasures. The air is all sweetness. The storms are but as flocks of mighty birds that spread their wings and sing in the high heaven. The earth cries to the heavens, “God is here!” The heavens cry to the earth, “God is here!” The land claims him, and his footsteps are upon the sea. O sunny joys of sunny June, how soon will you be scorched by the eager months coming burning from the equator!
July. Rouse up! The temperate heats that filled the air are raging forward to glow and overfill the earth. There are deep and unreached places for whose sake the probing sun pierces down its glowing hands. The earth shall drink of the heat before she knows her nature or her strength. Then shall she bring forth to the uttermost the treasures of her bosom. For there are things hidden far down, and the deep things of life are not known till the fire reveals them.