SPRING 41 



load of crimson-sprouting swedes and yellow-sprouting 

 mangolds that seem to be burning through the net of 

 snow above them. Down each side of every white road 

 runs a stream that sings and glitters in ripples like 

 innumerable crystal flowers. Water drips and trickles 

 and leaps and gushes and oozes everywhere, and extracts 

 the fragrance of earth and green and flowers under the 

 heat that hastens to undo the work of the snow. The 

 air is hot and wet. The snow is impatient to be water 

 again. It still makes a cape over the briers and brambles, 

 and there is a constant drip and steam and song of drops 

 from the crossing branches in the cave below. Loud 

 sounds the voice of leaf and branch and imprisoned water 

 in the languor and joy of their escape. On every hand 

 there is a drip and gush and ooze of water, a crackle and 

 rustle and moan of plants and trees unfolding and unbend- 

 ing and greeting air and light; a close, humid, many- 

 perfumed host; wet gloom and a multitudinous glitter; 

 a movement of water and of the shadows like puffs of 

 smoke that fleet over the white fields under the clouds. 

 And over and through it a cuckoo is crying and crying, 

 first overhead, then afar, and gradually near and retreating 

 again. He is soon gone, but the ears are long afterwards 

 able to extract the spirit of the song, the exact interval of 

 it, from among all the lasting sounds, until we hear it as 

 clearly as before, out of the blue sky, out of the white 

 cloud, out of the shining grey water. It is a word of 

 power — cuckoo ! The melting of the snow is faster 

 than ever, and at the end of the day there is none left 

 except in some hollows of the Downs on the slopes 

 behind the topmost of the beeches that darkly fringe the 



