The delightful rejoicing note is now everywhere 



Awakener to be heard fluting along the sunlit ways of 

 Woods tne wm &- I* a wa kes the forest. When the 

 voice of the woodpecker is heard it is the 

 hour for Nature to celebrate her own Ides of 

 March. Elsewhere the song-thrush and the 

 skylark have been the first heralds. Even in 

 the woods the missel-thrush may have flung 

 a sudden storm of song out on the cold tides 

 of the wind swaying the elm-tops like dusky 

 airweed of the upper ocean. But, in the 

 glades themselves, in the listening coverts, 

 it is the call of the green woodpecker that has 

 awakened the dreaming forest. 



And what an ancient old-world tale Picus 

 could tell. For, in the long ago, was he not 

 Picus the antique Italiot god. A forest-god 

 he was, son of ancient Saturn, and himself 

 the father of that beautiful being of the 

 woods, Faunus. And how far he wandered 

 from Thracian valley and Sabine oak -grove 

 . . . for in that far northern Finland, which 

 to the Latins was but an unknown remote 

 waste under the star Septentrion, he and his 

 son reappear, though now his name is Tapio 

 and Faunus is become Nyyrikki . . . 



" O Nyyrikki, mountain-hero, 

 Son of Tapio of forests, 

 Hero with the scarlet headgear, 



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