58 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
adees and the belching of the ice. The sun has 
got a new power in his rays after all, cold as 
the weather is. He could not have warmed me 
so much a month ago, nor should I have heard 
such rumblings of the ice in December. I see 
where a maple has been wounded, the sap is 
flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make 
sugar. 
If I were to paint the short days of winter 
I should represent two towering icebergs ap¬ 
proaching each other like promontories, for 
morning and evening, with cavernous recesses, 
and a solitary traveler wrapping his cloak about 
him and bent forward against a driving storm, 
just entering the narrow pass. I would paint 
the light of a taper at midday, seen through a 
cottage window, half buried in snow and frost. 
. ... In the foreground should appear the 
harvest, and far in the background, through 
the pass, should be seen the sowers in the fields 
and other evidences of spring. On the right 
and left of the approaching icebergs the heav¬ 
ens should be shaded off from the light of mid¬ 
day to midnight with its stars, the sun being 
low in the sky. I look between my legs up the 
river across Fair Haven. Subverting the head, 
we refer things to the heavens, the sky becomes 
the ground of the picture, and where the river 
breaks through low hills which slope to meet 
