44 MY DEVON YEAR 



where. Their first leaves stretch to the sunshine ; the 

 case they have Hfted out of the earth falls away from 

 them ; they are born to their place in the Spring, and 

 each green atom thrills with his own proper message 

 from the sun that shines for all. There is a charge 

 flying from the tree-tops to the deep anchors of the 

 living wood. It wakens the under-world of the earth, 

 and from the gigantic coiled and twisted roots, to the 

 least, white, infant fibril, all know that Winter has 

 departed. Last year's harvest now bursts gloriously 

 from the earth, and Nature, remembering her Autumn, 

 counts the germinating" hosts like a gentle miser. Not 

 one seed shall be forgotten ; not the least hopeful 

 scrap that adds its tiny emerald to the diadem 

 of April but shall win her due. And those un- 

 counted myriads who perish untimely, those whose 

 second pair of leaves will never open — even these 

 vanish unmourned, for they have played their part 

 also, and the momentary existence of them is 

 rounded into perfection as complete as the mountain 

 pine's, as full as that of the oak, whose life embraces 

 a thousand harvests, whose foliage has sheltered 

 fifty generations of man. 



Countless dainty things cry to be chronicled at this 

 season, and here on the confines, between the months, 

 is a glad hour full of bird music, haunted by poets. 

 But if the natural things of the springtime are better 

 sung than told, it is also certain that they are better 

 seen than sung ; for now the highways and hedges 

 themselves are calling ; the woods and hills and river- 



