I9 o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



The older one grows the more pathetic does the ten- 

 der grace of each spring become. So much of what we 

 loved and lost never comes back, that the beauty of the 

 spring touches us like the brightness of a perfect day, 

 when the grave is closing over dear eyes that shall 

 never more behold it. Why should the inferior things 

 of nature return, and those for whose use they were all 

 made lie unconscious in the dust ? The youthful heart 

 feels itself in sympathy with spring. The universal 

 freshness is as much a part of human youth as of the 

 herbs of the field. All the sights, sounds, and impulses 

 of the bright season have feelings and thoughts in the 

 young bosom corresponding to them. Hope springs 

 up with the sprouting grass, and love opens with the 

 unfolding blossoms, and all life is vernal with the vernal 

 landscape. But the aged heart has no part in the 

 bright renewal. It is outside of all the music and 

 bloom. It has outlived the fresh sympathies which 

 the season could kindle into gladness, and can no more 

 enter into the pleasures of hope. The aged live in the 

 springs of the past ; and their life goes forward to 

 another and brighter spring in the eternal world, of 

 which the springs of earth are only fleeting types and 

 shadows. But though the bright flame of their spring 

 crocus has burnt down to the socket, and only the 

 green monotonous melancholy leaves remain behind, is 

 there no re-kindling in the withered plot of their life 

 of the autumn crocus, whose more sober hue befits the 

 sadder character of the season ? Yes ! man's life, too, 

 has its Indian summer and its autumn crocus. The 



