Vril

“ Each bucket and pulley, it creaks and it wails;
By cisterns of farmyards, the pulleys and pails
They creak and they cry,
The whole of sad death in their melancholy.
The wind, it sends scudding dead leaves from the birches
Along o'er the water, the wind of November,
The savage, fierce wind;
The boughs of the trees for the birds' nests it searches,
To bite them and grind.
The wind, as though rasping down iron, grates past,
And, furious and fast, from afar combs the cold
And white avalanches of winter the old.
The savage wind combs them so furious and fast.
The wind of November. ”

“ In winter, too, we must be grateful to the ivy of the bare hedgerows shining in the sun, its leaves glistening like the simple jewels of a savage.
With February, we are agreed that spring comes in, but it is a springtime that keeps something of p. 5the graveness of winter: though, when the silver sunshine begins to be decorated with the singing of birds, we must call it spring.
In February, too, the roads are no longer edged with dead white grass, but show the fresh green of wayside plants—cow-weed, nettle, dock, and cleavers. ”

“ I can count upon these small screech owls by February,—the forlorn month, the seasonless, hopeless, lifeless month of the year, but for its owls, its thaws, its lengthening days, its cackling pullets, its possible bluebirds, and its being the year’s end! At least the ancients called February, not December, the year’s end, maintaining, with some sense, that the making of the world was begun in March, that is, with the spring. The owls do not, like the swallows, bring the spring, but they nevertheless help winter with most seemly haste into an early grave. ”

“ A January spring
Is worth no thing.
Pluck broom, broom still,
Cut broom, broom kill.
Tusser.
Good gardener mine,
Make garden fine,
Set garden pease,
And beans if ye please.
Set respis and rose,
Young roots of those.
Who now sows oats
Gets gold and groats.
Who sows in May,
Gets little that way.
Tusser.
[16]
A kindly good January freezeth pot by the fire.
O Winter! wilt thou never—never go!
O Summer! but I weary for thy coming!
David Gray.
If the robin sings in the bush, then the weather will be coarse; but if the robin sings on the barn, then the weather will be warm. ”

“ Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust—comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.
The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come and go—no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs—springs, rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain—pain? March storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it brings.
Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the acting-room window. ”

“ Governesses used to tell us that the seasons of the year each consist of three months, and of these March, April, and May make the springtime. I should like to break the symmetry, and give February to spring, which would then include February, March, April, and May. It has been said that winter is but autumn “shyly shaking hands with spring.” We will, accordingly, make winter a short link of two months—an autumnal and a vernal hand—December and January. It is a little sad for autumn to have to make room for chill November alongside of the happier months of September and October. ”

“ The sun crosses the line; the days grow a minute longer: spring will come by and by. But by what cruel irony was the month of March ever called spring?—March, which piles snow-storms and wind-storms on backs almost broken by endurance. The long agony of March and April is the breaking-point with many a delicate person who has borne pretty well the regular winter. ”

“ March may be colder, but the first day of Spring is marked on its calendar; and we wait for it like we wait for a lover—a lover in whose embrace we may not yet be, but who is, as it were, downstairs washing his hands, he has arrived, he is here—and so we can endure the suspense of waiting for him with a grin. April may fill the dykes fuller than February, whose skies are supposed to weep all day long, but generally only succeed in dribbling, but April belongs to Spring—even though our face and hands and feet are still in Mid-Winter. ”

“ Where the snow-fairies are again designing
Another robe for Nature's barren breast.
MARCH.
Come walk a mile with me—'Tis March and windy,
And Winter's dying breath comes hard and fast,
And hark!—the storm, like death-bells of a Sunday,
Tolls the sad knell upon the icy blast;
Louder and louder now the winds are wailing,
Faster and faster wings the frozen snow,
Darker and darker the cold clouds are sailing,
As the March-storm goes hurrying to and fro. ”

“ May and June and October,
As you call and call
I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;
And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,
While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that's ahead and behind. ”

“ March shewed some pale gleams of spring, but April was one of the coldest and dreariest in the memory of living man. The old earth in sympathy with the great struggle that was devastating and searing her, seemed to be withholding leaf and flower, and forbidding the sun to woo her. ”

“ Our April, at its best, is a bright, laughing face under a hood of snow, like the English March, but presenting sharper contrasts, a greater mixture of smiles and tears and icy looks than are known to our ancestral climate. Indeed, Winter sometimes retraces his steps in this month, and unburdens himself of the snows that the previous cold has kept back; but we are always sure of a number of radiant, equable days,—days that go before the bud, when the sun embraces the earth with fervor and determination. ”

“ Many a hardy little spring plant blooms first, not in April as we are apt to think, but more likely in January, though it may be two feet deep beneath the snow and ice and unseen by any living creature. To go no farther than my own garden, I have known a late January thaw, rapidly carrying off deep snow, to reveal the “ladies’ delights” in bloom beneath an overarching crust of ice. ”

“ Give voice round the farmsteads, and course o’er the moors,
With a hundred detours,
Till they leap on the forests, whose branches are rent.
I heap up the snowdrifts, bind firmer the streams,
And defy the sun’s beams.
My heart throbs with hate, and all tenderness spurning,
With winter again I span heaven’s blue arch.
I am passionate March.
APRIL.
I am the month of transition. ”

“ In most of the talks we listen to on Bird and Arbor Day, in most of the poems and prose selections we recite or read to celebrate this occasion, we hear about the awakening of spring, when birds return and trees and early plants blossom, and insects and hibernating animals emerge from a winter’s sleep. [114] All Nature is pictured as rousing from the lethargy of cold December and colder January and February, under the influence of the sun, now early with its morning greeting, and of soft breezes which begin to take the place of chilling gales. ”

“ Sea-like through the meadow rolled:
Once my heart could hardly hold
All its pleasures. I remember,
In the flood of youth's delight
Separate joys were lost to sight.
That was summer! Now November
Sets the perfect flower apart;
Gives each blossom of the heart
Meaning, beauty, grace unknown,—
Blooming late and all alone.
November, 1899.
THE LILY OF YORROW Deep in the heart of the forest the lily of Yorrow is growing;
Blue is its cup as the sky, and with mystical odour o'erflowing ”

“ Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter, that erelong, amid the cold, powdery snow, as it were a fruit of the season, will come twittering a flock of delicate, crimson-tinged birds, lesser red-polls, to sport and feed on the seeds and buds just ripe for them on the sunny side of a wood, shaking down the powdery snow there in their cheerful social feeding, as if it were high midsummer to them. ”

“ March will bluster, April will weep; May will smile through her tears by day and freeze us with her frosts at night, and July will stupefy us with thunderstorms, and August scorch us with heat one day and drench us to the skin the next. ”

“ But our heaviest snow-storms and most savage cold are often reserved for March; and to many an invalid it has given the final thrust: it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. But after March, in New England, comes April, utterly untrustworthy, and with no assured out-door life for a delicate person. ”

“ Some stars will rise and wane,—
But sure as comes the light,
I'll be with thee again!
APRIL AGAIN! April again! the willow wands are yellow
Rose-red the brambles that the passing wind knows,
Comes a robin's note like the note of a 'cello,
And across the valley, the calling of the crows,—
"April again!"
April again! and the marsh birds swinging
Over the rushes that belong to yester-year;
Silver shines the river, and young lips are singing
Songs as old as Eden—as old and as dear ”

“ Here’s that old friend who
went by my side so many years: this full, fragile
head of veined lavender. Oh that April
that we first went with our stiff lusts
leaving the city behind, out to the green hill—
May, they said she was. A hand for all of us:
this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem.
June is a yellow cup I’ll not name; August
the over-heavy one. And here are—
russet and shiny, all but March. And March?
Ah, March—
Flowers are a tiresome pastime.
One has a wish to shake them from their pots
[Pg 20] root and stern, for the sun to gnaw. ”

“ April passed and May came, and Virgie began to grow expectant. She was blooming into brighter beauty with every day, and seemed to become more womanly, so that her mother felt, with something of sadness, that she no longer had her little girl, but a lovely and winsome maiden, who would doubtless soon be won from her sheltering care to grace the home of another. ”

“ Despite the many wet and gusty days which April had thrust in rude challenge upon reluctant May, in the glory of the triumphant sun which flooded the concave blue of heaven and the myriad shaded green of earth, the whole world knew to-day, the whole world proclaimed that spring had come. ”

“ But the blustering days of March give way in due time to showery April, and then, with more courage, "chip" faces the music of the winds, blow they from whatever quarter, and darting along the top rail of our zigzag fences, chatters, scolds, and calls at and to his equally noisy companions. ”

“ The north wind may blow, for it is by no means a cheerless prospect, this wood-and-meadow world of [Pg 74] mine in the gray November light. The grass-blades are wilting, the old leaves are falling; but no square foot of greensward will the winter kill, nor a single tree perhaps in all my wood-lot. There will be little less of life next April because of this winter. The winter birds will suffer most, and a few may die.
Last February, I came upon two partridges in the snow, dead of hunger and cold. ”

“ You can be winter with a cheerful hearth; You can be March, bitter, bright and hard, Pouring sharp sleet, and showering cutting hail; You can be April of the flying cloud, And intermittent sun and musical air. ”

“ I am surrounded on all sides by the scenes and images consecrated by the fresh recollections of my unsullied years. They are not changed. The seasons which come and depart renew in them the havoc which they make. If the December destroys, the April revives; but man has but one spring, and the desolation of the heart but one winter! ”

“ The preludings of Winter are as beautiful as those of Spring. In a gray December day, when, as the farmers say, it is too cold to snow, his numbed fingers will let fall doubtfully a few star-shaped flakes, the snow-drops and anemones that harbinger his more assured reign. ”

“ Tulips gorgeous to behold;
Lilies, for our Lady's sake,
White as snow, May's posies make.
Then let March and April go,
Nor let gentle ladies sigh:
Though their blossoms fade and die,
Others will as dainty show. ”

“ Lovely flowers are opening eagerly to the sun and wind of Spring—in mid-August, with September's snows just at hand, a whole year's work of blossom and seed to be accomplished before the ten months' winter sleep begins. ”

“ Like the star-dust of Saturn they belt our fourteen-acre planet, not with three rings, nor four, but with twelve, a ring for every month, a girdle of twelve shining circles running round the year—the tinkling ice of February in the goblet of October!—the apples of October red and ripe on what might have been April's empty platter! ”

“ The veil from April's face.
Sweet, rosy April—laughing, sighing, waiting
Until the gateway swings,
And she and Lent can kiss between the grating
Of Easter's tissue wings.
Too brief the bliss—the parting comes with sorrow. ”

“ March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers. It never grows up, but, Alexandrine-like, "drags its slow length along,"—ever springing, bud following close upon leaf,—and when winter comes it is not annihilated, but creeps on mole-like under the snow, showing its face, nevertheless, occasionally by fuming springs and watercourses. So let our manhood be a more advanced and still advancing youth, bud following hard upon leaf. ”

“ Early April sees the last contest which winter wages for supremacy, and often it is a half-hearted attempt; but after the army of the North has retreated, with its icicles and snowdrifts, spring seems dazed for a while. Victory has been dearly bought, and April is the season when, for a time, the trees and insects hang fire—paralysed—while the chill is thawing from their marrow. Our northern visitors of the bird world slip quietly away. ”