THE COMING OF SPRING ^ 



There was no time to be lost, so I quickly 

 told him that I had not come to pull to pieces or 

 transplant, that the flowers of those woods and 

 hillsides were old friends of mine whose names 

 were written long ago in both brain and heart. 

 That now I only came to see them in their 

 haunts; my quest being of the bird in the tree, 

 the flower in the landscape, the spirit, not the 

 letter of the law ; the meaning, not the anatomy. 

 For a moment I feared that Time o' Year did not 

 understand my explanation, born of the first real 

 touch of Spring and my desire to propitiate him. 

 He did, however, but his ideas came to him more 

 by thought than through words. "Arbutus does grow 

 yet in the Holler woods, only folks don't think it 

 does or there would n't be any. Come and see!" 

 Refusing the proffered ride he strode up a wood 

 path, taking a short cut while we followed slowly, 

 Nell halting now and then to snatch at a tuft 

 of young grass. 



The change of flower growth from Spring to 

 Fall is made no less wonderful by its regularity, 

 and the bareness of Spring is as different from the 

 nakedness of Winter as slimness is from thinness. 

 The greater number of the early blooms are pale, 

 and hide in the grass or under dead leaves ; they 



