6 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



had been caught in the dew-wet grass. They wash 

 the field to its borders in their delicate azure hue. 

 At the sign of the shadbush the doors of my mem- 

 ory, too, swing wide open, and I am a boy again in 

 the meadows of my old home. The shadbush is in 

 blossom, and the fish are running the sturgeon 

 up the Delaware ; the shad up Cohansey Creek ; 

 and through the Lower Sluice, these soft, stirring 

 nights, the catfish are slipping. Is there any real 

 boy now in Lupton's Meadows to watch them come ? 

 Oh yes, doubtless ; and doubtless there ever shall be. 

 But I would go down for this one night, down in the 

 May moonlight, and listen, as I used to listen years 

 ago, for the quiet splash splash sf)lash, as the swarm- 

 ing catfish pass through the shallows of the main 

 ditch, up toward the dam at the pond. 



At the sign of the shadbush how swiftly the tides 

 of life begin to rise ! How mysteriously their cur- 

 rents run ! the fish swimming in from the sea, 

 the birds flying up from the South, the flowers open- 

 ing fresh from the soil, the insects coming out from 

 their sleep : life moving everywhere across the 

 heavens, over the earth, along the deep, dim aisles of 

 the sea! 



