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WALDEN. 
and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling 
sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped they 
only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect 
in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. 
No you don’t—chickaree—chickaree. They were whol¬ 
ly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, 
and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible. 
The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning 
with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery war- 
blings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from 
the blue-bird, the song-sparrow, and the red-wing, as if 
the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at 
such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all 
written revelations ? The brooks sing carols and glees 
to the spring. The marsh-hawk sailing low over the 
meadow is already seeking the first slimy life that 
awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard 
in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. 
The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire, —- 
“ et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata,” 
—as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the 
returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its 
flame; — the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, 
like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the 
summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing 
on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the 
fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes 
out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for 
in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the 
grass blades are their channels, and from year to year 
the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the 
mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So 
our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts 
forth its green blade to eternity. 
