Therefore are they welcome. The elms have the earliest cloud of green 

 bloom visiting my woods except the willow. Willows are first comers 

 with their leaves. They come first, the elms follow, and later the 

 buckeye and hickory and walnut and sycamore. Gooseberries leaf 

 early and have a vivid green. The oak-trees are tardier than anybody. 

 They are late sleepers. Even the blue jay's voice does not wake this 

 drowsy sleeper, although it clings in his branches. Nobody but the 

 sun can wake the oak. He is thick-skinned and impervious to hints. 

 The sun must come and spill flame on his face or ever the oak-tree 

 wakes, and long after all other trees are green the oak's brown leaves 

 with a dogged tenacity hang to their year-long home till the new buds 

 thrust them from their hold. Only new life will loose the grip of death; 

 and when peach and cherry and apple and pear and blackberry take 

 their turn at blooming, O ! we have royal mornings 

 on my farm. And then comes the late snowfall of 

 falling petals of blooms from apple-trees, and the 

 bees drone and take my honey paying no royalty 

 (like a foreign publisher), and the cooing dove 

 makes lamentation without cause, and the bluebirds 

 chatter so as to warm the heart, and the blue violets 

 make a man wonder at the dainty doings of the 

 fingers of the God of beauty, and the Mayapples 

 hold their parasols to keep the sun from their faces 



white as fresh snows, and the Sweet Williams hold 

 their blue flowers up like a rustic lad presenting a 

 nosegay to a woman, and the wild crabapple pours 

 its delicious odors on the springtime wind and spring 

 is come to my farm, and April rain drips from the 

 eaves of the glowing leaves, and clouds and sun- 

 light play hide-and-seek over my plowed fields, and 

 young lovers hunt four-leaf clover in my cloverfield, 

 and the birds woo 

 and get married 

 with never the in- 

 tervention of justice 

 or minister, and the 

 frogs sing with 

 melodious voices 

 through the sweet * * 



215 



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