NEWS OF SPRING 

 crowd that dreads it as it would a 

 scourge from Heaven, you find the ad- 

 mirable silence of the trees, all the 

 goodly Virgilian realities of sunk roads, 

 clear springs, shady pools that sleep on 

 the mountain-sides, where they seem to 

 await a goddess's reflection. You climb 

 a path between two stone walls bright- 

 ened by violets and crowned with the 

 strange brown cowls of the arisarum, 

 with its leaves of so deep a green that 

 one might believe them to be created to 

 symbolize the coolness of the well, and 

 the amphitheatre of a valley opens like 

 a moist and splendid flower. Through 

 the blue veil of the giant olive-trees that 

 cover the horizon with a transparent 

 curtain of scintillating pearls, gleams 



