Therefore are they welcome. The elms have the earliest cloud of green 
bloom visiting my woods except the willow. Willows are first comers 
with their leaves. They come first, the elms follow, and later the 
buckeye and hickory and walnut and sycamore. Gooseberries leaf 
early and have a vivid green. The oak-trees are tardier than anybody. 
They are late sleepers. Even the blue jay’s voice does not wake this 
drowsy sleeper, although it clings in his branches. Nobody but the 
sun can wake the oak. He is thick-skinned and impervious to hints. 
The sun must come and spill flame on his face or ever the oak-tree 
wakes, and long after all other trees are green the oak’s brown leaves 
with a dogged tenacity hang to their year-long home till the new buds 
thrust them from their hold. Only new life will loose the grip of death; 
and when peach and cherry and apple and pear and blackberry take 
their turn at blooming, O! we have royal mornings 
on my farm. And then comes the late snowfall of 
falling petals of blooms from apple-trees, and the 
bees drone and take my honey paying no royalty 
(like a foreign publisher), and the cooing dove 
makes lamentation without cause, and the bluebirds 
chatter so as to warm the heart, and the blue violets 
make a man wonder at the dainty doings of the 
fingers of the God of beauty, and the Mayapples 
hold their parasols to keep the sun from their faces 
white as fresh snows, and the Sweet Williams hold 
their blue flowers up like a rustic lad presenting a 
nosegay to a woman, and the wild crabapple pours 
its delicious odors on the springtime wind and spring 
is come to my farm, and April rain drips from the 
eaves of the glowing leaves, and clouds and sun- 
light play hide-and-seek over my plowed fields, and 
young lovers hunt four-leaf clover in my cloverfield, 
and the birds woo 
and get married 
with never the in- 
tervention of justice 
or minister, and the 
frogs sing with 
melodious voices 
through the sweet 
215 
