SPRING 83 



The clouds returned after the rain, and 

 my first forenoon was spent under an um- 

 brella on the Bethlehem plateau, not so much 

 walking as standing about ; now in the woods, 

 now in the sandy road, now in the dooryard 

 of an empty house. It was Sunday; the 

 rain, quiet and intermittent, rather favored 

 music ; and all in all, things were pretty 

 much to my mind, plenty to see and hear, 

 yet all of a sweetly familiar sort, such as one 

 hardly thinks of putting into a notebook. 

 Why record, as if it could be forgotten or 

 needed to be remembered, the lisping of 

 happy chickadees or the whistle of white- 

 throated sparrows ? Or why speak of shad- 

 blow and goldthread, or even of the lovely 

 painted trilliums, with their three daintily 

 crinkled petals, streaked with rose-purple? 

 The trilliums, indeed, well deserved to be 

 spoken of : so bright and bold they were ; 

 every blossom looking the sun squarely in 

 the face, in great contrast with the pale 

 and bashful wake-robin, which I find (by 

 searching for it) in my own woods. One 

 after another I gathered them (pulled them, 

 to speak with poetic literalness), each fresher 



