MAY. 



THE spring in New England does not, like the same 

 season in high northern latitudes, awake suddenly into 

 verdure out of the bosom of the snows. It lingers along 

 for more than two months from its commencement, like 

 that long twilight of purple and crimson that leads up 

 the mornings in summer. It is a pleasant, though some- 

 times weary prolongation of the season of hopes and 

 promises, frequently interrupted by short periods of win- 

 try gloom. The constant lingering delay of nature in 

 the opening of the flowers and the leafing of the trees 

 affords us something like an extension of the dayspring of 

 life and its joyful anticipations. As we ramble through 

 rustic paths and narrow lanes and over meadows still 

 dank and sere, the very tardiness with which the little 

 starry blossoms peep out of its darkness, and with which 

 the wreath of verdure is slowly drawn over the plains, 

 gives us opportunity to watch them and become ac- 

 quainted with their beauty, before they are lost in the 

 crowd that will soon appear. 



Our ideas of May, being derived, in part, from the 

 descriptions of English poets and rural authors, abound 

 in many pleasant fallacies. There are no seas of waving 

 grass and bending grain in the May of New England. 

 Nature is not yet clothed in the fulness of her beauty ; 

 but in many respects she is lovelier than she will ever be 

 in the future. Her very imperfections are charming, in- 

 asmuch as they are the budding of perfection, and afford 

 us the agreeable sentiment of beauty joined with that of 



