la^tmMta^aata 



WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



" Then weary seems the street parade. 

 And weary books and weary trade: 



I'm only wishing to go a-fishing — 

 For this the month of May was made." 



We are struck by the new verdancy of the world 

 as our eyes stray across the valley. The grass 

 at our feet and the spruces close by are dark, with 

 a tinge of bluish, perhaps, and the squares of 

 young grain and pasture bounded by shadowy 

 lines that mean stone walls are in varying tones 

 of emerald; but all the wide forest-space elsewhere 

 is softest, lightest leaf -green, almost yellow in 

 the billowy high-lights, and having a luminous 

 quality exceedingly refined and fresh. This is 

 due to the thinness, and consequent translucency, 

 of the young leaves, as we see when we look closely 

 at those over our heads, which glow almost like 

 flakes of greenish-yellow glass. 



Where chestnuts show themselves, the little, 

 new, five-fingered leaves, fringing the twigs and 

 sketching in what the tree will presently become, 

 are as yellow as they will again be in October, 

 and the unblemished sky beyond them takes a 

 violet hue of royal richness. Let an indigo-bird 

 flit through these flecks of gold and he becomes a 

 veritable gem. The oaks are putting forth, as 



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