HOURS OF SPRING. 17 
hedges will become solid walls of golden bloom, but 
there will never again be a spring for him. It is very 
hard, is it not, at ninety? Itis not the tyranny of any 
one that has done it ; it is the tyranny of circumstance, 
the lot of man. The song of the Greeks is full of sorrow; 
man was to them the creature of grief, yet theirs was 
the land of violets and pellucid air. This has been a 
land of frost and snow, and here too, it is the same. A 
stranger, I see, is already digging the old man’s garden. 
How happy the trees must be to hear the song of 
birds agnin in their branches! After the silence and the 
leaflessness, to have the birds back once more and to 
fcel them busy at the nest-building ; how glad to give 
them the moss and fibres and the crutch of the boughs 
to build in! Pleasant it is now to watch the sunlit 
clouds sailing onwards; it is like sitting by the sea. 
There is voyaging to and fro of birds ; the strong wood- 
pigeon goes over—a long course in the air, from hill to 
distant copse ; a blackbird starts from an ash, and, now 
inclining this way and now that, traverses the meadows 
to the thick corner hedge; finches go by, and the air is 
full of larks that sing without ceasing. The touch of the 
wind, the moisture of the dew, the sun-stained raindrop, 
have in them the magic force of life—a marvellous some- 
thing that was not there before. Under it the narrow 
blade of grass comes up freshly green between the old 
white fibres the rook pulled; the sycamore bud swells 
and opens, and takes the eye instantly in the still dark 
wood ; the starlings go to the hollow pollards; the 
lambs leap in the mead. You never know what a day 
may bring forth—what new thing willcomenext. Yes- 
terday I saw the ploughman and his team, and the earth 
gleam smoothed behind the share ; to-day a butterfly 
has gone past; the farm-folk are bringing home the 
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