52 Walks in New England 



dreds of hepaticas in full beauty on a sunny hill 

 side, with their miraculous blue, lavender, pink 

 and milk-white, every one a marvel of variable 

 colour, pulsing with the very heart of earth, and 

 the aspirant essence of the spring. Hepaticas 

 like this on the joth of March, who ever knew 

 the like ! It is as much as one expects to see a 

 solitary hepatica in the first fortnight of April. 

 But everything is hastening to light this spring, 

 the birds are antedating their arrivals. Perhaps 

 they are too daring, but until the frost comes, let 

 us forget that such a thing can be, and delight in 

 the sunny flavours of the woodland, the gracious 

 sweetness of the flowers, the music of the birds 

 and the busy murmur of the bees ; and as one 

 drinks of the cold spring beneath the hemlocks, 

 he partakes of the greatest blessing of Nature, 

 the pure essence of her life, distilled through 

 clouds and suns, and filtered through the chan 

 nels of the holy earth, where as yet man has not 

 arrived to delete and pollute with his many in 

 ventions. 



All these wonderful things the faint ruddy 

 tinges of the red maples and the delicate yellow 

 tints of the poplars on the great mountain side, 

 beneath the many forest trees whose responses 

 are yet invisible, the sweep of sunny atmosphere 

 through the delectable valley, the delicious fra- 



