156 
ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
SPRING. 
I N all climates spring is beautiful. The birds begin to sing; they utter a few- 
joyful notes, and then wait for an answer in the silent woods. Those green- 
coated musicians, the frogs, make holiday in the neighboring marshes. They, 
too, belong to the orchestra of nature, whose vast theater is again opened, 
though the doors have been so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung 
with snow and frost like cobwebs. This is the prelude which announces the 
opening of the scene. Already the grass shoots forth, the waters leap with 
thrilling force through the veins of the earth, the sap through the veins of the 
plants and trees, and the blood through the veins of man. What a thrill of 
delight in spring-time ! What a joy in being and moving! Men are at work in 
gardens, and in the air there is an odor of the fresh earth. The leaf-buds begin 
to swell and blush. The white blossoms of the cherry hang upon the boughs 
like snow-flakes; and ere long our next-door neighbor will be completely hidden 
from us by the dense green foliage. The May-flowers open their soft blue eyes. 
Children are let loose in the fields and gardens. They hold buttercups under 
each other’s chins, to see if they love butter. And the little girls adorn them¬ 
selves with chains and curls of dandelions; pull out the yellow leaves to see, 
if the school-boy loves them, and blow the down from the leafless stalk, to 
find out if their mothers want them at home. And at night so cloudless and so 
still! Not a voice of living thing,— not a whisper of leaf or waving bough,—■ 
not a breath of wind,— not a sound upon the earth,or in the air! And over¬ 
head bends the blue sky, dewy and soft, and radiant with innumerable stars 
like the inverted bell of some blue flower, sprinkled with golden dust, and 
breathing fragrance. Or, if the heavens are overcast, it is no wild storm of 
wind and rain, but clouds that melt and fall in showers. One does not wish to 
sleep, but lies awake to hear the pleasant sound of the dropping rain. 
Longfellow. 
Stranger, these gloomy boughs 
Had charms for him; and here he loved to sit, 
His on’y visitants a straggling sheep, 
The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper; 
And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath 
And juniper and thistle sprinkled o’er, 
Fixing his downcast.eye, he many an hour 
A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here 
An emblem of his own unfruitful life; 
And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze 
On the more distant scene — how lovely ’tis 
Thou seest,—and he would gaze till it became 
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain 
The beautj':, still more beauteous. 
Wordsworth. 
