MINSTREL WEATHER 



glad to be of service even in this thwarted 

 fashion. Yet May's store is manifold; her 

 waiting buds can replace the scattered ones. 

 The face of Nature wears in the shining 

 month a beauty something less than 

 mature, but more than the mischief and 

 troubling intensity of April. The wonder 

 of the hour the adieu of spring and the re- 

 joicing shout of coming summer dwells 

 there, a subdued, impassioned note. The 

 crest of the year's youth merges like all 

 crests into the wave beyond, renewed for- 

 ever like the waves. To man alone has 

 been given the difficult task of keeping on 

 without a spring. That singular adversity 

 is ours in common with inanimate things: 

 May rose and lilac come back each year 

 to the forsaken house, but to the house 

 May brings no change. About it a world 

 of snow becomes a world of blossoms, as 

 for us, and the sun creates. But the house 

 needs aid of human hands, man of earth's 

 quickened beauty in luminous May. 



[30] 



