V. MAY--PERFECTION OF BEAUTY

_Among the changing months May stands confessed
The sweetest and in fairest colors dressed._
--THOMSON.


Surely the poet sang truly. We would not forget Lowell's challenge "What
is so rare as a day in June," but as we sit here on the top of a
limestone cliff nearly a hundred feet above the bed of the creek, and
watch the red sun brightening the gray of the eastern sky, while the
robins and the meadow larks are singing joyous matins we steep our senses
in the delicate colorings of earth and sky that signalize the awakening
of another day and the real revival of another year. April was
encouraging, but there were many bare boughs and many of the last year's
leaves still clung to the oaks and made a conspicuous feature of the
landscape. The leafy month of June will show us more foliage, but it will
be of a darker and more uniform shade of green. Now, as the sun rises
higher and sends his rays through both the woodlands and the brushlands
we thrill with delight at the kaleidoscope of color. There are no
withered leaves to mar the beauty now. Seen in mass, and at a distance,
the woodlands are a soft cinerous purple. But the tops, where the ruddy
rays of the sun are glancing, are a hazy cloud of tender green, pink,
yellow and pale purple. Nearer trees show in their opening leaves pale
tints of the same gorgeous colors which we see in the fall. The maple
keys and the edges of the tender leaves glow blood-red in the morning
sun. The half-developed leaves of the birch and the poplar are a
yellowish-green, not unlike the yellow which they show in autumn. The
neatly plaited folds of the leaves of the oak display a greenish or
cinerous purple, a soft and delicate presentment of the stronger colors