ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 239 



APRIL. 



"THIS the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird 

 1 In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard ; 

 For green-meadow grasses wide levels of snow, 

 And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow ; 

 Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, 

 On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light. 

 O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots 

 The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots ; 

 And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps, 

 Round the boles of the pine wood the ground-laurel creeps, 

 Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, 

 With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers ! 

 We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south ! 

 For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth ; 

 For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, 

 Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod ! 

 Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased 

 The wail and the shriek of the bitter north-east. 

 Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow, 

 All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau, 



Until all our dreams of the land of the blest 







Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny south-west. 

 O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath, 

 Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this death ; 

 Renew the great miracle; let us behold 

 The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled, 

 And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old ! 

 Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain, 

 Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, 

 And in blooming of flowers and budding of tree 

 The symbols and types of our destiny see ; 

 The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole, 

 And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul ! 



WHITTIER. 



I thank heaven even- summer's day of my life that my lot was humbly cast 

 within the hearing of romping brooks, and beneath the shadow of oaks, and 

 away from all the tramp and bustle of the world, into which fortune has led me in 

 these latter years of my life. I delight to steal away for days and for weeks to- 

 gether, and bathe my spirit in the freedom of the old woods, and to grow young 

 again lying upon the brookside, and counting the white clouds that sail along 

 the sky, softly and tranquilly, even as holy memories go stealing over the vault 

 of life. DONALD G. MITCHELL. 



