12 The Strife of March 



brilliance in the crown of the pinched hawthorn ; 

 and where the wood-pigeon claps out from rifling 

 its berries, the grey bars of its fresh plumage shine 

 almost with the brightness of the magpie's patches 

 of pure white. Along the south wall of the barn 

 the orange lichen glows with a summerlike richness 

 in the new warmth of the sun. The reflected rays 

 already strike hot from the brick ; but the wall is 

 no sooner in shadow than the icicles at the roof's 

 edge cease to drip, and add a new layer to their 

 length and thickness as the frost returns. 



This conflict of spring frost and sunshine shows 

 itself by roads and pathways, and by the fountains 

 of lesser waters, in the casing of dull-white ice 

 which grows day by day as the night frosts seal again 

 the moisture outpoured by the sun. In the hollow 

 hill-lanes the suspended drainage of the surround- 

 ing fields breaks out in periodic springs which flow 

 only in the middle of the day. The sap in trees is 

 flowing strongly upward under the pull of the sun ; 

 and where there is an unhealed wound in a bough, 

 the dripping life-blood of the tree forms an ice- 

 cake on the barren lawn below. It is these cakes 

 and smears of ice upon the face of the soil which 

 are characteristic of long spells of frosty weather 

 in early spring, when the alternation of brief thaws 

 and swift-returning cold remoulds and redistributes 

 day by day the mantle of some earlier snowfall. In 

 the lambing-folds a slight fall of two or three inches 

 is quickly beaten down by the feet of the skipping 

 lambs, and forms a dry pavement of earth and ice, 

 which is much healthier, for all its apparent rigours, 



