March — The Sweet Time. 63 



stone bridge lower down, which to strangers always 

 seemed so uselessly wide in summer, our road com- 

 munication would have been entirely interrupted. I 

 felt curious to see the effects of the flood, and, 

 notwithstanding the incessant rain, we quitted the 

 Val Ste. VeVonique and drove in the direction of the 

 Loire. 



The morning after our return to the valley we rose 

 early, and breathed an air at once so mild and pure 

 that we knew the spring had come. 



Spring is much rather the season of poets than of 

 painters. What delights us in the spring is more a 

 sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any 

 visible reality. There is something in the softness of 

 the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very 

 sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses and 

 consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter. It is 

 natural that poets should love the spring, which comes 

 to them with a thousand flowers, with songs of birds, 

 with purer, brighter light, and such refreshment that it 

 is like a fountain of jouvence. So they hail the season 

 with their most melodious invocations, sometimes in 

 grave earnestness, as if its benefits were too great to be 

 treated lightly, and sometimes in frolic merriment like 

 the dancing of kids or lambs. Thomson is grave and 

 stately : — 



* Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, 

 And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, 

 While music wakes around, veiled in a shower 

 Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.' 



