Spring Days in Winter 28 1 



an exquisite grace possesses the earth ; the atmos 

 phere pulsates with warmth ; there arise light 

 veiling vapours about the woodland ; distances 

 grow into mysteries ; and horizons lift into the 

 heavens. Such a day was not to be obliterated 

 by the stern and savage onslaught of the north 

 west wind, that crushed the mercury to zero 

 weather with such sudden force. The word 

 had gone forth that the earth was alive, and, 

 charged too much in the cold trip that followed, 

 one felt the rebate coming, as it did yesterday. 



It was certainly a noble day, storm-gathering, 

 it is true, but in itself wonderfully fine and affec 

 tionate. To the wanderer over fields and through 

 forests, worshiping God in his holy temple, where 

 all the earth kept silence before him, it was a 

 chrysolite of days. In the eastern sky first came 

 the reflex of the clouded sun, the delicate greens 

 and blues that melt in each other, amid clouds of 

 lavender and ashes of roses ; and then the sun 

 came out of hiding for a few minutes, gracing 

 and sweetening the forest depths, now open to 

 his regal entrance ; lighting the fields with their 

 colouristic harmonies of bufT and salmon thatch, 

 the blacks and grays and umbers of sweet fern, 

 golden-rod and melilot, with the low oaks, now 

 brown, now yellow green, now fairly red, and 

 touching the pines and hemlocks, filled them with 



