The Open Air 



into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes 

 overhead. With bright light, and sunshine, and sun- 

 rise, and blue skies the bird is so associated in the 

 mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of winter, 

 at least assures us that summer will certainly return. 

 Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the rather 

 to be represented with such things that might suggest 

 hope than such as convey a cold and grim despair? 

 The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that 

 cuts and destroys, why these ? Why not rather the 

 dear larks for one ? They fly in flocks, and amid the 

 white expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant 

 twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking 

 some grassy spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the 

 bird of the light, is there in the bitter short days. 

 Put the lark then for winter, a sign of hope, a cer- 

 tainty of summer. Put, too, the sheathed bud, for 

 if you search the hedge you will find the buds there, 

 on tree and bush, carefully wrapped around with 

 the case which protects them as a cloak. Put, too, 

 the sharp needles of the green corn; let the wind 

 clear it of snow a little way, and show that under cold 

 clod and colder snow the green thing pushes up, 

 knowing that summer must come. Nothing despairs 

 but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new moon 

 in the sky: she is white in true frost, and yellow a 

 little if it is devising change. Set the new moon as 

 something that symbols an increase. Set the shep- 

 herd's crook in a corner as a token that the flocks are 

 already enlarged in number. The shepherd is the 

 symbolic man of the hardest winter time. His work 

 is never more important than then. Those that only 

 roam the fields when they are pleasant in May, see 

 the lambs at play in the meadow, and naturally think 

 of lambs and May flowers. But the lamb was born in 



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