The Spring

( Originally Published 1922 )

IT IS the Spring again. Not merely by the calendar, dear children of mine own age, but also, I would hope, by your hearts: to that Spring let us say our word of welcome.

I am writing on an early day in March. It is still Winter, so far as snow and blow, mere scenic illusion, goes: but a certain voiceless promise in the air unclothes the landscape of its remaining rigors and makes mock at the weather man's predictions. With the Spring at our doors we shall laugh to scorn the utmost rage of Boreas. Let him do his worst—he must go, and quickly too !

Yet I was not mindful of the Spring (for my thoughts were on a less cheerful business) until coming home t'other evening I noticed the lengthening of our brief twilight,—as if the day had been pulled out one stop; and standing to look at the sky, with its unwonted clear space of radiance, there came a rush of vernal airs about my forehead, and I felt the fulness of the Spring within my heart.

Oh, may the Spring ever so come to me! .. .

Now though a man may not be so learned as Solomon in what some other inspired writer has called the "signs of Spring",—though he be indeed but a humble suburbanite and unblest amphibian, neither of city nor country, he may feel that the sun 'gins to be hot on the back along about noon. May see that the snow, melting off, leaves long pools in the road and common which give a cheerful brightness under the Spring sun. May note that the cock crows oftener and with a more resonant pipe than in the gray Winter dawns; that the sap is rising in the willow and maple, and the pioneer robin shows his red breast among the sparrows' brown. May mark within himself a stirring of sensations and desires long dormant as though the old Adam had turned in his sleep. May be conscious of that indefinable sense of expectancy brooding over all things betwixt earth and heaven, which heralds the rebirth of the year.

The Spring in truth has a tale of its own, and not the same tale for every man—like love itself, ever the same, yet ever different. But of all its messages and portents I chiefly prize that strange quickening of the pulse, that fleeting, unaccountable rapture of the heart, that feeling as though one were at times an aeolian harp played upon by mysterious airs,—a reed through which all things blow to music, —until you actually have to stop now and again when walking out-of-doors, the ravishment and delight of it being more than you can bear.

If you do not so feel the Spring, there is, I fear, no Spring for you.

No season discourseth so wisely and witchingly to the heart; none hath so much of that poignant, unutterable poetry for which all the poets have tuned their harps in vain. Most ancient of deceivers, her cuckoo note is aye potent to befool the world—not a wound, not a pang, not a sorrow is remembered in the healing smile of Spring.

The truth is, we are never so much in love with life as in the Spring. It involves the whole of life—a man counts his Springs, not his Winters or Summers. It is Nature's renew-al and confirmation of her old promise to us, which each interprets in a jealous way he would not dare confess to his neighbor. How she cheats us, and how we love the cheat! For let us but admit her subtle witchery a moment, and then (as sweet William hath it) our "state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate!"

Bankrupt in hope indeed is he to whom the Spring doth not fetch a new bravery of spirit, urging him to try another and a gayer hazard of fortune. Sick of a truth is he whose feeble lungs crow not with a specious health in these enchanted airs. Dim is the eye that fails to mark the cheerful lengthening of the days. Cold and dead the heart in which the Spring awakes not a dream of love.

As a man turns into middle life (sorely against his will) I think he is apt, on looking back, to regret chiefly the Springs he has left behind. If there were to be a seasonal restitution, I can promise for one man at least, that he would prefer certain Springs to a more than equal count of Summers. Early Springs I mean, of course; the wonder and romance of which pursue us as with a vain regret during all our after-life, so that we seem to be constantly seeking the clew to some beautiful and marvellous story but half revealed to us in a dream.

For, in truth, the enchantment of those Springs, the loveliness and mystery and desire of them, deepen the more the farther we go back into our youth, until they seem but a con-fused yet delightful blowing of merry winds and a mere hide-and-seek of frolic sunshine; beyond which Garden of Fačry it is forbidden to pass.

Why a man should be more concerned to remember and treasure up his early Springs than his early Summers, this old child confesses himself unable to say.