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the pallid earth. It lies weary, patient, sad- 

 colored under this breaking sky. Nowhere 

 a hue of hope. The woodland stands dim 

 and cheerless for all its promise of buds, 

 with such trees as have been lured into 

 blossom but poor ghosts in rags and tatters. 

 Young grass and wheat show drowned and 

 sickly green. It seems worse than idle to 

 dream of growth and blowth over such 

 drenched, hopeless breadths. Fruitful sum- 

 mer, indeed, looks further away than when 

 sleet-bespangled snow lay white. 



The raw wind chills the marrow, but look 

 overhead. See summer's true harbinger 

 wild fowl in flight. In the lazy south wind, 

 the pouring rain, they heard a call invisible 

 to your ears, and are winging to answer it. 

 See the wisp of blue-wing pause in mid- 

 heaven, hover and circle above the flooded 

 swale, then drop to its rocking breast. 

 There they will rest and feed diving, 

 splashing, calling aloud in sibilant, wheed- 

 ling chatter till some gunner creeps upon 

 them and showers them with leaden hail. 



Wild geese are more wary. Seldom, in- 

 deed, do they dare in broad daylight waters 

 thus in the open. They make for the 

 covert of wooded streams, feeding thence 

 at night in some near wheat-field or corn- 



