The blackbird was singing. He has been back for nine days. It was dreadful in the dark and cold to hear him singing. How terrible all lovely things are become!
Same day
In the half dark I came home along the canal. In these nights, coming home from the hospital, I have learned always more and more that the canal is beautiful, curving down between its old poor black tumbling houses, under its black bridges.
To-night the few lights of the quays and of windows fell into the water of the canal, just odds and ends of gold.
I stopped and stood and looked.
It had been a bad day in my ward.
I thought, how beautiful ugly things are become!
Saturday night before Easter
The cool wet fresh smells of the garden, and of all the gardens of the quarter, come in at my wide window. It is almost midnight, the rain has stopped, and it is not cold any more. Sometimes the crows talk together from the top of the trees where their nests are, above the old low roofs my window looks across. There has been for days now, in all the rain and cold, a drift of green about the trees, the fine green mesh of a veil that seems to float, it is so bright and frail, about the black wintry tree-trunks and boughs and branches. The blackbirds came back last week to the garden.
But it is only to-night that one can believe in spring.