New England spring.
But at last—at last—spring did come at Poganuc! This marvel and mystery of the new creation did finally take place there every year, in spite of every appearance to the contrary. Long after the bluebird that had sung the first promise had gone back into his own celestial ether, the promise that he sang was fulfilled.
Like those sweet, foreseeing spirits, that on high, bare tree-tops of human thought, pour forth songs of hope in advance of their age and time, our bluebird was gifted with a sure spirit of prophecy; and, though the winds were angry and loud, though snows lay piled and deep for long weeks after, though ice and frost and hail armed themselves in embattled forces, yet the sun behind them all kept shining and shining, every day longer and longer, every day drawing nearer and nearer, till the snows passed away like a bad dream, and the brooks woke up and began to laugh and gurgle, and the ice went out of the ponds. Then the pussy-willows threw out their soft catkins, and the ferns came up with their woolly hoods on, like prudent old house-mothers, looking to see if it was yet time to unveil their tender greens, and the white blossoms of the shad-blow and the tremulous tags of the birches and alders shook themselves gayly out in the woods. Then, under brown, rustling leaf-banks, came the white, waxy shells of the trailing arbutus with its pink buds, fair as a winter’s dawn on snow; the blue and white hepaticas opened their eyes, and cold, sweet, white violets starred the moist edges of water-courses, and great blue violets opened large eyes in the shadows, and the white and crimson trilliums unfurled under the flickering lace-work shadows of the yet leafless woods; the red columbine waved its bells from the rocks, and great tufts of golden cowslips fringed the borders of the brooks. Then came in flocks the delicate wind-flower family; anemones, starry white, and the crowfoot, with its pink outer shell, and the spotted adder’s tongue, with its waving yellow bells of blossom. Then, too, the honest, great, green leaves of the old skunk-cabbage, most refreshing to the eye in its hardy, succulent greenness, though an abomination to the nose of the ill-informed who should be tempted to gather them. In a few weeks, the woods, late so frozen,—hopelessly buried in snow-drifts,—were full of a thousand beauties and delicacies of life and motion, and flowers bloomed on every hand.
Autumn.
The bright days of summer were a short-lived joy at Poganuc. One hardly had time to say “How beautiful!” before it was past. By September came the frosty nights that turned the hills into rainbow colors, and ushered in Autumn, with her gorgeous robes of golden-rod and purple asters. There was still the best of sport for the children, however; for the frost ripened the shagbark walnuts and opened the chestnut burrs, and the glossy brown chestnuts dropped down among the rustling yellow leaves and the beds of fringed blue gentian.... Here and there groups of pines and tall hemlocks, with their heavy background of solemn green, threw out the flamboyant tracery of the forest in startling distinctness. Here and there, as they passed a bit of low land, the swamp maple seemed really to burn like crimson flame, and the clumps of black alder, with their vivid scarlet berries, exalted the effect of color to the very highest and most daring result. No artist ever has ventured to put on canvas the exact copy of the picture that Nature paints for us every year in the autumn months. There are things the Almighty Artist can do that no earthly imitator can more than hopelessly admire.
Bird-talk.
Who shall interpret what is meant by the sweet jargon of robin and oriole and bobolink, with their endless reiterations? Something wiser, perhaps, than we dream of in our lower life here.