man was to them the creature of grief, yet theirs was the land of violets
and pellucid air. This has been a land of frost and snow, and here too,
it is the same. A stranger, I see, is already digging the old man's
garden.

How happy the trees must be to hear the song of birds again in their
branches! After the silence and the leaflessness, to have the birds back
once more and to feel them busy at the nest-building; how glad to give
them the moss and fibres and the crutch of the boughs to build in!
Pleasant it is now to watch the sunlit clouds sailing onwards; it is like
sitting by the sea. There is voyaging to and fro of birds; the strong
wood-pigeon goes over--a long course in the air, from hill to distant
copse; a blackbird starts from an ash, and, now inclining this way and
now that, traverses the meadows to the thick corner hedge; finches go by,
and the air is full of larks that sing without ceasing. The touch of the
wind, the moisture of the dew, the sun-stained raindrop, have in them the
magic force of life--a marvellous something that was not there before.
Under it the narrow blade of grass comes up freshly green between the old
white fibres the rook pulled; the sycamore bud swells and opens, and
takes the eye instantly in the still dark wood; the starlings go to the
hollow pollards; the lambs leap in the mead. You never know what a day
may bring forth--what new thing will come next. Yesterday I saw the
ploughman and his team, and the earth gleam smoothed behind the share;
to-day a butterfly has gone past; the farm-folk are bringing home the
fagots from the hedgerows; to-morrow there will be a merry, merry note in
the ash copse, the chiffchaffs' ringing call to arms, to arms, ye leaves!
By-and-by a bennet, a bloom of the grass; in time to come the furrow, as
it were, shall open, and the great buttercup of the waters will show a
broad palm of gold. You never know what will come to the net of the eye
next--a bud, a flower, a nest, a curled fern, or whether it will be in