240 THE PROCESSION OF SPRING 



Very beautiful and bright are the children's garlands 

 as they sing beneath the windows on the first of May : 



This is the day, the first of May, 

 Please to remember the garland day. 



So runs the couplet that exacts our pence. Re- 

 member it? No need to ask us that. The colonist at 

 the other side of the world remembers it, and dreams 

 of home. The convict as he picks his oakum remem- 

 bers it, and is the better perhaps for the thought. 



It is not only birds and children that May-day 

 makes to sing. It beats a sort of song out of very 

 humdrum lives — often but a clumsy rhythm, but 

 perhaps a little gain on the workaday prose. I once 

 knew a rhymer whose fancy it moved thus : 



THE COMING OF SPRING. 



An iron hand on a fettered land, 



Had faltered in grip at last. 

 And he settled low in his throne of snow, 



And his breath came hard and fast. 



It powdered the mist upon rail and tree 

 It huddled the cows in the byre. 



It buried the hares in a dusty drift. 

 And scorched the young ash as fire. 



