MARCH.
Now husbandman and hinds in March prepare,
And order take, against the teeming year,
Survey their lands, and keep a good look out
To get their fields and farms well fenc’d about.
Now careful gard’ners, during sunny days,
Admit to greenhouses the genial rays:
Vines, espaliers, and standard trees demand
The pruner’s skilful eye, and ready hand;
And num’rous shoots and roots court the kind toil
Of transplantation, or another soil.
*
In the “Mirror of the Months” it is observed, that at this season a strange commotion may be seen and heard among the winged creatures, portending momentous matters. The lark is high up in the cold air before daylight, and his chosen mistress is listening to him down among the dank grass, with the dew still upon her unshaken wing. The robin, too, has left off, for a brief season, his low plaintive piping, which it must be confessed was poured forth for his own exclusive satisfaction, and, reckoning on his spruce looks and sparkling eyes, issues his quick peremptory love-call, in a somewhat ungallant and husband-like manner.
The sparrows, who have lately been sulking silently about from tree to tree, with ruffled plumes and drooping wings, now spruce themselves up till they do not look half their former size; and if it were not pairing-time, one might fancy that there was more of war than of love in their noisy squabblings.
Now, also, the ants first begin to show themselves from their subterranean sleeping-rooms; those winged abortions, the bats, perplex the eyes of evening wanderers by their seeming ubiquity; and the owls hold scientific converse with each other at half a mile distance.
Now, quitting the country till next month, we find London all alive, Lent and Lady-day notwithstanding; for the latter is but a day after all; and he must have a very countrified conscience who cannot satisfy it as to the former, by doing penance once or twice at an oratorio, and hearing comic songs sung in a foreign tongue; or, if this does not do, he may fast if he please, every Friday, by eating salt fish in addition to the rest of his fare.