velvet peals down in their dark cathedrals, but no clash nor
clangor nor faintest echo ripples up into my Garden World. Not
a bee drones his drowsy song among the flowers, for there are
no flowers there. One venturesome little phlox dared the cold
winds, and popped up his audacious head, but his pale, puny
face shows how near he is to being frozen to death. The poor
birds are shivering in their nests. They sing a little, just
to keep up their spirits, and hop about to preserve their
circulation, and capture a bewildered bug or two, but I don't
believe there is an egg anywhere round. Not only the owl, but
the red-breast, and the oriole, and the blue-jay, for all his
feathers, is a-cold. Nothing flourishes but witch-grass and
canker-worms. Where is June?--the bright and beautiful, the
warm and clear and balm-breathing June, with her matchless,
deep, intense sky, and her sunshine, that cleaves into your
heart, and breaks up all the winter there? What are these
sleety fogs about? Go back into the January thaw, where you
belong! What have the chill rains, and the raw winds, and the
dismal, leaden clouds, and all these flannels and furs to do
with June, the perfect June of hope and beauty and utter joy?
Where is the June? Has she lost her way among the narrow,
interminable defiles of your crooked old city streets? Go out
and find her! You do not want her there. No blade nor blossom
will spring from your dingy brick, nor your dull, dead stone,
though you prison her there for a thousand years of wandering.
Take her by the hand tenderly, and bid her forth into the
waiting country, which will give her a queenly reception, and
laurels worth the wearing. Have you fallen in love with her--
on the Potomac, O soldiers? Are you wooing her with honeyed
words on the bloody soil of Virginia? Is she tranced by your