Spring (freshwater)

“ But what has been smitten by the heat and swept away by raging storms is replaced in the first sunshine of spring; and even the devouring fire is not potent enough wholly to destroy what has been spared by the sun and the storms. The spring may seem more potent in tropical lands, but nowhere is it more marvellous than in the steppes, where in its power it stands—alone—opposed to summer, autumn, and winter. ”

“ A week of spring days bright in every hour, without a stain or thought of the storm, came in glorious colors, giving still greater pledges of happy life to every living creature of the spring, but a loud, energetic snowstorm possessed every hour of yesterday. Every tree and broken weed bloomed yet once more; all summer distinctions were leveled off; all plants and the very rocks and streams were equally polypetalous.
This morning winter had everything in the valley. The snow drifted about in the frosty wind like meal, and the falls were muffled in thick sheets of frozen spray. ”

“ A spring is always old and always new. It is ever in movement, yet constant, seldom greater and seldom less, in the case of most natural upspringing waters, syphoned from the deep cisterns of earth. Absolutely material, with no mystery in its origin, it impresses the fancy as a thing unaccountable, like the source of life embodied, something self-engendered. ”

“ It was toward the end of winter, when amidst the snowstorms and the gloomy, frosty days, the approaching spring sent as a forerunner a clear, warm, sunny day, or but an hour, yet so full of spring, so eagerly young and beaming that sparrows on the streets lost their wits for joy, and people seemed almost as intoxicated. ”

“ Nature is very dead, and I understood the glee with which the children used to announce the return of the crows, for these wise birds are the unfailing harbingers of Spring. With us Spring is undecided, fickle, and coy. She is not sure of herself, and after making timid, tentative advances, retreats again, uncertain as to her ability to cope with grim Winter. In Canada, Spring comes with an all-conquering rush. In one short fortnight she clothes the trees in green, and carpets the ground with blue and white hepaticas. ”

“ Now the frost pricketh sore, then the sun glances;
Now the rain beateth down, then the snow falleth,
Nothing the cheery, brave Springtime appalleth.
Bravely she smiles through the somber chill weather,
Smiles on the blight and the promise together;
And at the end of the long suffering
All the world over is ruled by the Spring.
How does the tide come? Not all in one rising,
Daunting the land and the heavens surprising ”

“ Spring came, as it always comes in that snow-washed northern land, with a ramp of the ice loosening its grip from the turbulent waters, and a whirr of the birds winging north in long, high, wedge-shaped lines, and a crunching of the icefloes riding turbulently out to sea, and a piping of the odorous spring winds through the resinous balsam-scented woods. ”

“ Feb. 9.—What are signs of spring, anyway? when I was out doing the chores this morning the thermometer stood at ten below zero and yet there was a feeling of Spring in the air. The sky and the sunshine had a look of spring and the sparrows were all chirping as if they were talking of the good times coming. There was a hen cackling over a new-laid egg that would be worth its weight in silver on the table of a Toronto millionaire, and about a dozen Leghorns had found their voices again and were making a feeble attempt to scratch in a forkful of straw that lay in the sunshine. ”

“ Winter is staid and dignified and grand with its stark trees and mantle of brown earth, and summer is glowing and glorious; but very young spring is so sappy and curly and yellow and green and lavender that you take it to heart and let it nestle there to suck its pink apple-blow thumb, and curl up its young sprout toes sheltered away from the cold that sets it back and the sun that forces it to break bud. ”

“ What can exceed the dazzling splendour of a rising sun, on the trees and bushes, after a night of rain and freezing, when every branch appears like a shining crystal? A prospect grand indeed!
The severe frosts of Winter, with the agitated atmosphere, dispel the sickening fumes which arise from heated and stagnant pools, and decaying vegetation.
This gives health and vigour to the body, and an it were, new spring to thought. Who but has observed the lively sensations of body and mind on a clear frosty morning in winter? ”

“ THE GARDEN IN SPRING The dividing line between the seasons is, of course, quite arbitrary, for Nature progresses evenly, gradually, unceasingly, and not in the jerky way which our clumsy divisions of time imply. Still it is convenient, almost necessary indeed, to adopt some such broad classification of the periods of the year as that into the four seasons which has done duty for so many centuries. One may take the flowering of the snowdrop to indicate the onset of spring, though itself belonging more especially to winter. ”

“ A blustering and brewing pervades nature when Spring comes over the land to conquer Winter. When we hear the conflict we cry: “Spring has come!” Not so. The true, genuine Spring-life, nascent underneath the fury, makes no noise at all, weaves away inaudibly, invisibly, in tiny seeds, and conceals in itself the noiseless new germs of life. ”

“ Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the spring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.
And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During this most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive haste and rapidity. ”

“ Spring has come and gone. The lilacs and crocuses, the tulips and buttercups, have bloomed and faded; the lawn has had its sprinkling of dandelions, and the duff of their blossoms has drifted past the hemlocks and over the tree-tops. The grass has had its first cutting; the roses have burst their buds and hang in clusters over the arbors; warm winds blow in from the sea laden with perfumes from beach and salt-marsh; the skies are steely blue and the cloud puffs drift lazily. ”

“ Once upon a time, in the midst of the most detestable Spring ever known—a Spring consisting entirely of hopes of better weather, raised for no other purpose than to be so thwarted and dashed that the spirits of that brave and much harassed creature, man, might sink still lower—once upon a time, even in this Spring, there was a fine evening. ”

“ This pretty little spring, with its cool water running day and night into the old barrel, and then gurgling over the staves, flowing away among the grass and flowers, is but a trifling thing perhaps, and might be passed with but little notice by people who have always lived in cities. But country-folks know how to value a cool, unfailing spring. In the hot days of summer the thirsty and tired farmer would rather see that spring than an ice-cream saloon. ”

“ By the time you have reached the spring the woods are full of life and sound, and the spring itself adds to the winter music. The rocks where it bubbles out are thickly covered with hoar frost. One of the big blocks of limestone in its causeway is covered with ice, clear and viscid as molten glass. The river is bridged over with ice twenty inches thick, save only the little gulf stream into which the spring pours its waters. From the surface of this stream thin smoky wreaths of vapor rise and are changed into crystals by the frosty air. ”

“ This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. ”

“ In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. ”

“ You have in your climate genial and joyous spring, when nature revives from the dead and puts on her youthful and gay apparel, when the thorn, the citron, and the apple-tree bud and blossom;—beautiful is your spring, the loveliest and most charming season of your year. ”

“ The first breath of spring comes at last, but only slowly can it free the land from winter’s shackles. Only when the life-giving sunshine is accompanied by the soft south wind, at the earliest in the beginning of April, usually about the middle of the month, does the snow disappear quickly from the lower slopes of the mountains and from the deep valleys rich in black earth. ”

“ Thoreau was right in saying that no man was ever alert enough to behold the first manifestation of spring. Sometimes as we walk toward the mossy bank in the glen where the fresh green leaves of the haircap mosses were last year's first signs of vernal verdure, the bluebird calls to us from the torch-like top of the smooth sumac and shyly tells us that, if we please, spring is here. ”

“ The rain of spring is brisk, fragrant, charged with life-giving warmth. I welcome it delightedly as it visits the earth, enriches the streams, waters the hills abundantly, makes the furrows soft with showers for the seed, elicits a perfume which I cannot breathe deep enough. ”

“ Low across the fields of camas bluer than the sky?
I’ve a tryst with Spring here—maybe they’ll be few
Now the world grows older—and shall I delay
Just because a Winter has stolen joy away?
What cares Spring for old joys, all her joys are new.
Maybe there’ll be singing in my sorrow yet—
I have heard of such things—but, if there be not,
Still there’ll be the green pool in the pasture lot,
All a-trail with willow fingers, delicate and wet.
Winter is a passing thing and Spring is always gay ”

“ But Spring in the country,—O season rightly named!—a goddess-queen glides through the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein springs up to meet her and do obeisance. We, gross and heavy, blind and deaf, are slow to catch the flutter of her robes, the music of her footfall, the odor of her breath; the shine of her far-off coming. We call it cold and Winter still. We huddle about the fires and wonder if the Spring will never come ”

“ Spring comes soberly, inaudibly as it were, in these temperate European lands, where the grass holds its green all winter, and the foliage of ivy, laurel, holly, and countless other evergreen shrubs, links the lifeless to the living months. ”

“ Three-fourths of the year go by and its call is not once heard; spring comes round in the revolution of the seasons and it sounds forth almost incessantly from early morning till late in the evening, as long as the pairing-time lasts. But it is silent sooner in the south than in the north, sooner in the plains than in the mountains, exactly corresponding to the brooding-time of the foster-parents, which begin their nest-building earlier, and finish the rearing of their young sooner in the south and in the plains than in the north and in the highlands. ”

“ Then as the spring drew near, if, indeed, such a word as spring be at all applicable to an abode of utter dreariness, a faint twilight would be just discernible. The illuminated portion of the sky would move round and round the horizon each twenty-four hours, gradually becoming more and more conspicuous, until at last the edge of the sun appeared. ”

“ Spring rain is beautiful, impartial, lovable. With pearly drops it washes every leaf on tree and bush, ministers equally to salutary herbs and noxious growths, searches out every living thing that needs its beneficence. ”

“ As for me, I am on the watch for the shadbush. Oh, yes, spring comes before the shadbush opens, but it is likely not to stay. The wild geese trumpet spring in the gray March skies as they pass; a February rain, after a long cold season of snow, spatters your face with spring; the swelling buds on the maples, the fuzzy kittens on the pussy-willows, the opening marsh-marigolds in the meadows, the frogs, the bluebirds—all of these, while they stay, are the spring. But they are not sure to stay over night, here in New England. You may wake up and find it snowing—until the shadbush opens. ”

“ Leigh Hunt discourses of this beautiful season with his usual grace. He says—
“The spring is now complete. The winds have done their work. The shaken air, well tempered and equalized, has subsided; the genial rains, however thickly they may come, do not saturate the ground, beyond the power of the sun to dry it up again. There are clear crystal mornings; noons of blue sky and white cloud; nights, in which the growing moon seems to lie looking at the stars, like a young shepherdess at her flock. ”

“ Day after day nothing happens, then suddenly, some noon, it has scarcely been set on the ground when its blossoms stir, and it is murmurous with bees. Then we know that spring indeed has come, and we begin to rake the lawns, wherever the frost is out, wheeling great crate loads of leaves and rubbish upon the garden, and filling our neighbors' houses with pungent smoke.
There is a certain spot between the thumb and first finger which neither axe nor golf-club nor saw handle seems to callous. The spring raking finds it out, and gleefully starts to raise a blister. ”