The Birds and Poets 1 1 



But when March has blown his windy trumpet, 

 and proclaimed the tyrant winter dead, and timid 

 April comes, with smiles and tears, it is as if the 

 trump of Gabriel had sounded, and all the earth 

 had "opened" unto heaven! It is the month of the 

 first spring buds. The bud says : 



"My leaves instinct with glowing life 

 Are quivering to unclose; 

 My happy heart with love is ripe — 

 I am almost a rose." 



It is the month of nest building for our early 

 spring birds. It is the month when the lingering 

 snows on the shadowed hillside melt before the 

 ascending sun, and form the numberless little 

 spring runs in which the first spring green appears. 

 It is the month of the singing frogs, new born in 

 every swamp and meadow pool, whose chorus is: 

 ^'It is sprrrrrring! It is sprrrrrring!" As John 

 Vance Cheney sings, in his "Spring Song," it is the 

 glad time : 



"When to pool and log 

 Come newt and frog, 



And the first blade peers at the snowdrift's edge, 

 And there's dreamy green along the hedge." 



It is the month of regeneration of the earth's 

 waiting soil, made ready by melting snows and 

 cleansing showers, for its new increase of all the 

 green things of earth. It is the month of burgeon- 



