Out of Doors in February 



surface gleam or an enamel, it is stained through. 

 Beside the moist clods the slender flags arise filled 

 with the sweetness of the earth. Out of the darkness 

 under that darkness which knows no day save when 

 the ploughshare opens its chinks they have come to 

 the light. To the light they have brought a colour 

 which will attract the sunbeams from now till harvest. 

 They fall more pleasantly on the corn, toned, as if 

 they mingled with it. Seldom do we realise that the 

 world is practically no thicker to us than the print of 

 our footsteps on the path. Upon that surface we walk 

 and act our comedy of life, and what is beneath is 

 nothing to us. But it is out from that under-world, 

 from the dead and the unknown, from the cold moist 

 ground, that these green blades have sprung. Yonder 

 a steam-plough pants up the hill, groaning with its 

 own strength, yet all that strength and might of 

 wheels, and piston, and chains, cannot drag from the 

 earth one single blade like these. Force cannot make 

 it; it must grow an easy word to speak or write, 

 in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of growth 

 and life, of beauty, and sweetness, and colour, starting 

 forth from the clods that gives the corn its power 

 over me. Somehow I identify myself with it; I live 

 again as I see it. Year by year it is the same, and 

 when I see it I feel that I have once more entered on 

 a new life. And I think the spring, with its green 

 corn, its violets, and hawthorn-leaves, and increasing 

 song, grows yearly dearer and more dear to this our 

 ancient earth. So many centuries have flown ! Now 

 it is the manner with all natural things to gather as 

 it were by smallest particles. The merest grain of 

 sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by 

 another; after a while there is a heap ; a century and 

 it is a mound, and then every one observes and 

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