EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 281 
No mortal man could have breathed to that 
cadence without long intervals of relaxation. 
The repetition would have been fatal to the 
lungs. No doubt there was much healthy ex¬ 
ercise taken in the meanwhile. He should forget 
his rhyme and tell his story, or forget his story 
and breathe himself. In Shakespeare and else¬ 
where the climax may be somewhere along the 
line which runs as varied and meandering as a 
country road ; but in Lydgate it is nowhere but 
in the rhyme. The couplets slope headlong to 
their confluence. 
March 31, 1852. Intended to get up early 
this morning and commence a series of spring 
walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented. 
Early, however, I saw the clouds in the west, 
for my window looks that way, suffused with 
rosy light, but that flattery is all forgotten now. 
How can one help being an early riser and 
walker in that season when the birds begin to 
twitter and sing in the morning. 
The expedition in search of Sir John Frank¬ 
lin, in 1850, landed at Cape Riley, on the north 
side of Lancaster Sound, and one vessel brought 
off relics of Franklin, viz., u five pieces of beef, 
mutton, and pork bones, together with a bit of 
rope, a small rag of canvas, and a chip of wood 
cut by an axe.” Richardson says, 66 From a 
careful examination of the beef bones, I came 
