HOURS OF SPRING. 17 



hedges will become solid walls of golden bloom, but 

 there will never again be a spring for him. It is very 

 hard, is it not, at ninety? It is not the tyranny of any- 

 one that has done it ; it is the tyranny of circumstance, 

 the lot of man. The song of the Greeks is full of sorrow ; 

 man was to them the creature of grief, yet theirs was 

 the land of violets and pellucid air. This has been a 

 land of frost and snow, and here, too, it is the same. A 

 stranger, I see, is already digging the old man's garden. 

 How happy the trees must be to hear the song of 

 birds again in their branches ! After the silence and the 

 leaflessncss, to have the birds back once more and to 

 feel them busy at the nest-building ; how glad to give 

 them the moss and fibres and the crutch of the boughs 

 to build in ! Pleasant it is now to watch the sunlit 

 clouds sailing onwards ; it is like sitting by the sea. 

 There is voyaging to and fro of birds ; the strong wood- 

 pigeon goes over a long course in the air, from hill to 

 distant copse ; a blackbird starts from an ash, and, now 

 inclining this way and now that, traverses the meadows 

 to the thick corner hedge ; finches go by, and the air is 

 full of larks that sing without ceasing. The touch of the 

 wind, the moisture of the dew, the sun-stained raindrop, 

 have in them the magic force of life a marvellous some- 

 thing that was not there before. Under it the narrow 

 blade of grass comes up freshly green between the old 

 white fibres the rook pulled ; the sycamore bud swells 

 and opens, and takes the eye instantly in the still dark 

 wood ; the starlings go to the hollow pollards ; the 

 lambs leap in the mead. You never know what a day 

 may bring forth what new thing will come next. Yes- 

 terday I saw the ploughman and his team, and the earth 

 gleam smoothed behind the share ; to-day a butterfly 

 has gone past ; the farm-folk are bringing home the 



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