Though winter seems impatient to begin his work, he is as loath to quit it. In March it is time for him to depart, but he may be compared to a crocodile, who, having paid you a visit and staid as long as he ought, pretends to go away: but while he puts his head and body out of doors, leaves his huge tail writhing, bending and brandishing behind. Thus, during March, winter’s tail is left to annoy us with squalls, gusts, tempests, rain, hail, snow. There often seems to be a strife between the seasons, spring and winter alternately getting the ascendency. But, after a while the latter finds his icicles melting away, and to avoid being reduced to a stream of water, he slowly retreats, first to New England, lingering along the Green Mountains, till, pursued by the Genius of flowers, he goes across Hudson’s Bay and hides himself behind the hills of Greenland, or creeps like a woodchuck, into Symmes’s Hole, till he can venture out again with safety.
One of the first and most delightful signs of spring is the return of the birds. The gentle bluebird comes first, with her liquid notes, chanting at early morn the glad tidings of the departure of winter. Then comes the robin, full of business; then the sparrow and the wren; then the woodpecker is heard drumming in the wood; and then the pigeons are seen shooting swiftly by in thousands; and then the wild geese,
——lone wandering but not lost,
high in the air, night and day, are heard and seen in their long journey to the lakes. Spring, indeed, is so full of pleasant things, that we are well paid for the wearisomeness of winter by its return.
SUMMER.
May glides gently into June, which is the most beautiful of all the months—
In fullest bloom the damask rose is seen,
Carnations boast their variegated dye;
The fields of corn display a vivid green,
And cherries with the crimson orient vie;