... the yong sunn

hath in the ramm his halvè cours yrunn.

chaucer.

in the earlier year when the chill winds blow

the breath of buds with the breath of snow,

and the climbing sap like a spirit passes

through trunks unscreened from the noonday glow,

o’er the wind-frayed weeds and the withered grasses

and the leaves that linger in layered masses,

march, the master of hounds, doth go

to hunt the hills and the wet morasses.

c. h. lüders.

y books, my flowers, and my colorful interior surroundings do much to relieve the monotony of the long winter months. not until aries appears for his accustomed charge upon the spring do i yearn intently for its advent. then the days seem the longest—the tedious days of waiting; the longest days, which are to come, will be the shortest. for the days may not be measured by the length, but by the flight of the hours and the beauty they bring; the 188sun and the shadows shorten the longest day.

does not a restlessness come to man with the ascending sap in the trees, when he likewise would cast off the inertia that has possessed him, and respond to the magical touch of the sun? there is much that is beautiful in the mythopœic representation of the seasons. all winter, says the legend, the sweet sunshine is chased by the relentless storm, now hiding beneath the clouds, now below the hills, showing herself for a moment merely to flee again. but, finally becoming bolder, the sunshine advances to meet the storm, who, captivated by her beauty, woos her as he pursues her, and wins her for his bride. then is there great rejoicing upon the earth, and from their union are born plants which spring from its surface and spangle it with flowers. but every autumn the storm begins to frown anew, the sunshine flees from him, and the pursuit begins again.

is not the sunshine, more than anything else, the prelude to spring? how it sifts and permeates through the windows into one’s very being, this first march sunshine! looked at from within it is already spring without, so luminous the atmosphere and so soft the shadows. perfectly aware am i that it may not continue and that the storm will cause the sunlight to hide itself again, 189just as it has done so often before when it merely gleamed for a moment from the edge of the cloud. even now the fickle sun sinks behind a sharp dark band in the west. the mole must retreat to his burrow; to-morrow the storm and the snow! at least the flowers will be shielded from the chilling blasts, and nature work her own reward. still must the north wind beat ere the south breeze may blow. but how, while it lasts, the sunlight warms where it falls, drawing a scarlet aureole from the maple, setting the snow-banks free, and liberating the ice-locked streams.

every morning now must the sun rise earlier to fulfill his task. the buds of a million forests long for his touch, hillsides of spring beauty and violets are eager for his approach, the flowers in every meadow and woodland are awaiting his alchemy. already the willow catkins have stirred at his caress. the shrubby dogwood has felt his force, and kindles into flame. the wands of the golden willow are gilded anew; the red horn of the great aroid is peering from the mold.

think of his task! to clear the earth of its coverlet of snow and clarify the streams; to burst the chrysalis and put forth the leaves; to push up the grass blades and perfume the flowers; to breathe upon and resuscitate all the dormant world of vegetable and animal 190life. the leaflets upon leaflets and fern fronds upon fern fronds the sunshine must unfold; the acres of grain and the clover fields it must fall upon; the myriad fruits it must ripen!

lo! how marvelous the task; a smile and a summons for all!

down in the hollows of the wood where the wind-flowers grow, under the meadow-grasses where the blue flag and lily bulbs wait, below the waters to bid the marsh marigolds and arrowheads rise, into the farthest swamps where the orchid hides, in waste places where tares and teazles crowd, on countless hillsides and in countless valleys must the sunbeams penetrate and quicken to awakened life. and all this gradually, little by little, day by day, hour by hour, bringing forth each blossom at its appointed time, giving the butterfly his wings, providing the bee his sustenance. what is there here on earth to compare with the miracle of returning spring, the labor and strength of the sun? the power of hercules a trillion fold is concentrated in the rays that are loosing the fetters of the streams to-day. lo! the marvel of the renascent year, when earth renews her youth and nature is born again.

the march days pass, and more and more is the sun’s strength felt. his vassals, the showers and the south winds, he calls 191to aid him in his task; and at once the grasses and larches turn green and arbutus and bloodroot are fanned into bloom. a mile away the sunshine lights the hills; a league away it burnishes and warms the river. daily the beams stream upon the earth and reveal fresh treasures. swiftly a shadow steals along the hills. the tempered april rain falls from the gray april sky. responsive, the sward assumes a brighter green, the daffodil a richer gold. the sap mounts to the topmost branches and penetrates the minutest twigs. day by day the naked sprays are feathered by the pushing buds. a scarf of green is flung across the copse. the shadblow silvers the woods, columbine and cranesbill throng the slopes, and hepatica and dog-tooth violet nod to the quickening breeze of spring.

the spring days pass, but the miracle remains; hourly a new marvel is wrought by the sunlight and the shower. the oriole appears and orchards burst into bloom; the wood-thrush sings and the dogwood and wild thorn join the flowering pageant. the warm perfumed breath of the new year floats upon the air—the breath of flower and grass and expanding bud. nature’s color-box opens anew; her brush is laid upon each petal with what consummate address and variety!—pink upon the petals of the peach, a flush on the cheek of the 192apple bloom, a gloss of gold upon the buttercup. the trillium thrusts up its snowy triangles, the gold-thread its white stars, and banks become purple with violets. tiny polypody and oak-fern replume the stumps and bowlders. from the frost-smitten meadows and waste places rise fresh pennants of green. unfurled is the flag of spring. and the hues and odors that are still in embryo and the sunshine is preparing—all the sweets of june and the infinite beauties of midsummer, the wealth of the roses, the clover bloom, the labyrinthine tangle of wild flowers, even to the asters and colored leaf of autumn. the foam and surge of the apple bloom are but a wave of the color and fragrance that is to be. æons ago the march sunlight fell upon the flowers and primeval nature. vegetation welcomed it then as it welcomes it now. next year and the next year and centuries hence will it fall upon the earth and work out the miracle of spring. is it not new and ever beautiful, this vernal resurrection? that we, too, possessed this subtle alchemy and might extract this elixir from the april sun!

how the wings of the doves glisten and mirror the rays as i watch them floating by my windows! i love my flock of doves—the dove is so associated with the relentment of the elements and the olive leaf of 193spring. a monotonous life they lead in their diurnal circlings round the barn and their self-same route over their circumscribed domain—a monotonous life, at least, it appears to the observer, while probably the very reverse to them. every load of grain which comes to the neighboring barns they may note from their vantage-ground and meditate upon its special virtues. the droppings of the barley now being stored in yonder granary undoubtedly form as weighty a subject to them as the fluctuations in the market do to the maltster himself. then the incertitude which must attend the obtaining of their supply of food naturally furnishes them with a constant source of speculation; besides, who but they themselves may know what petty bickerings and jealousies form the daily routine of their inner life? the jaunty leader of the flock who curves his iris neck so proudly may be the humblest of hen-pecked fathers in the privacy of his home; and what appears to be the approving cooings of devoted dames may be only a prosaic homily on the part of his exacting wives.

my flock of doves seem alway idling and courting the sunbeam. now, apparently, they are drifting aimlessly upon the air; again they veer suddenly, to turn a gleaming wing for me to admire. with what indescribable grace the circling forms 194hover over the eaves after each of their tours of investigation, the swiftly fanning wings seeming to cease their motion simultaneously as the flock alights, and once more preens its iris in the sun. indecision is a characteristic of my flock of doves—always uncertain of the direction they would take, and apparently never satisfied for more than a passing moment with their surroundings. no sooner have they flown to the meadow beyond the copse than they are back again; and scarcely have they perched upon the roof or discovered fresh pickings ere they take flight in another direction, to return as quickly. is it that they, like the rest of us, are never content, and that much must have more? i should like to quote them a lyric from john wilbye’s second set of madrigals, which possibly they may not have heard:

i live, and yet methinks i do not breathe;

i thirst and drink, i drink and thirst again;

i sleep, and yet do dream i am awake;

i hope for that i have; i have and want;

i sing and sigh; i love and hate at once.

oh tell me, restless soul, what uncouth jar

doth cause in store such want, in peace such war?

risposta.

there is a jewel which no indian mines

can buy, no chymic art can counterfeit;

it makes men rich in greatest poverty,

makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,

195the homely whistle to sweet music’s strain:

seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent,

that much in little, all in naught—content.[15]

15. the student of french poetical literature will notice the marked resemblance in expression of a portion of this lovely lyric of fourteen lines and the following prettily turned quatorzain by a singer of the sixteenth century:

ie vis, ie meurs: ie me brule & me noye,

i’ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure:

la vie m’est & trop molle & trop dure.

i’ay grans ennuis entremeslez de ioye:

tout à un coup ie ris & ie larmoye,

et en plaisir maint grief tourment i ’endure:

mon bien s’en va, & à iamais il dure:

tout en un coup ie seiche & ie verdoye.

ainsi amour inconstamment me meine:

et quand ie pense auoir plus de douleur,

sans y penser ie me treuue hors de peine.

puis quand ie croy ma ioye estre certeine,

et estre au haut de mon desiré heur,

il me remet en mon premier malheur.

œuures de louize labé lionnoize. a lion par ian de tournes, m.d.lvi. auec priuilege du roy.

the first of the migratory flocks have come. is it the robins or the bluebirds first, or the omnipresent song-sparrow scattering his notes like a shower? warm as the scarlet of his wings is the greeting of the starling from his haven in the reeds; and ah! how sweet the carol of the meadow-lark from the distant fields. again i 196hear the warble which the blackbird dropped when flying over the autumnal stubbles, only it has a cheeriness that is alone brought forth by sunshine and the lengthening days. little flutings and grace notes rise from sheltered thickets and sunny hollows—assemblages of snow-birds, canada sparrows, and red-polls practicing their fruehlingslied. the white-throated sparrow’s silver strain i hear on every side, the very beat of the spring-tide and song of the sunshine. even the voice of the crow has a softer tone. from my study windows i watch the sable hosts returning to their roost in the distant wood. i see them slowly filing by during the winter, at the appointed hour, but less numerously, and seldom audibly. now they voice their passage; their shadows cast a sound. from time immemorial they have occupied a roost in the same wood, their numbers apparently neither increasing nor diminishing. the first squads fly over early in the evening, re-enforcements arriving continually until dusk. they come from all directions, the total assemblage numbering perhaps a thousand. above the tree-tops, for half an hour before dark, there ascends a weird chorus of evening, composed of every shade of corvine basso, and basso profondo. borne from afar on the still evening air, the hoarse notes come to me mellowed and 197subdued—a fitting ave of the darkening day.

later, the first swallow races by, with the first moth in his bill, urged on the wider wings of the south wind—the first swallows, rather; for there is not only one but a score coursing through the ether, exultant in the freedom of existence. do they, indeed, drop from the sky some bland spring morning—spirits of dead children revisiting their homes—as the fanciful roman legend has it? how swiftly they cleave the air with their forked tail and sickle-shaped wings! we marvel at the soaring of the hawk, balancing himself in an ever-widening and ascending circle, ever tracing the curve of beauty. we wonder at the agility of the humming-bird, and his power of suspension in mid-air over a flower. but the hawk barely flaps a pinion, sustained through some inexplicable agency in overcoming the natural force of gravity; and the humming-bird every little while rests from the friction of the air. is not the perpetual flight of the swallow, his unceasing motion and incessant turning upon himself a greater wonder?

i stand on the margin of the stream just before an impending shower, when a concourse of hirundines is intent upon the capture of its prey. the surface is dimpled by the constant rising of feeding trout, and 198brushed every now and then by a bird drinking on the wing. it is a favorite haunt of both fly-catchers and swallows, lured by the rich insect fauna that congregate above the still expanse of water, the ephemerina dancing their joyous dance of an hour. the stream is scarcely a rod and a half wide. it is almost overarched with bushes and trees, and abounds with curves. there are at least forty swallows hawking over it, all chasing above the glassy surface, ceaselessly coming and going, swift as missiles sprung from a sling. yet not a catkin of the alder tangle or blade of the rushes is so much as grazed by a wing; not a barbule of one bird ruffled by the feather of another, amid all their lightning turns and curvatures. it is the same in their chase over a field when attracted close to the earth by insects. it is the same in their coursing through the air which i see through my windows, only they have but their fellows, and no other objects to avoid. yet even then their flight is a perpetual wonder.

sacred to the penates the swallow was rightly held; it were a vandal who would harm them. beloved wherever they roam the sky, procne has, nevertheless, been comparatively neglected by the muse, while philomela has received the greater homage. is not the swallow’s warble sweet, associated 199as it is not only with the swallow’s beauty, but with our very houses and barns and the blue sky that bends above them? best known of all individual “pursuers of the sun” is the bird mentioned in the fifth stanza of the elegy:

the swallow twittering from the straw-built shed;

and his companion of the winter’s tale, wheeling between daffodils and violets. keats’s line is among the most expressive that have been written on the bird:

swallows obeying the south summer’s call.

hood’s simile is also fine:

summer is gone on swallow’s wings.

gay, in the shepherd’s walk, has the swallow do graceful duty as a weather-prophet:

when swallows fleet soar high and sport in air,

he told us that the welkin would be clear.

athenæus has referred as happily to the bird as any of the old greek poets in a fragment, the song of the swallow:

the swallow is come, she is come to bring

the laughing hours of the blithesome spring—

the youth of the year and its sunshine bright—

with her back all dark and her breast all white.

from the fables of lessing i learn that the swallow was originally as harmonious 200and melodious a songster as the nightingale, until, becoming wearied of dwelling in lonely thickets to be heard and admired only by peasants and shepherds, she forsook her humble friends and took flight to the town. but, in the mad rush of the city, men found no time to listen to her heavenly lay, forgetting which, by and by, instead of singing she learned to build.

i recall no reference to the swallow, however, comparable to charles tennyson turner’s, in one of his many lovely sonnets, wind on the corn. not only the swallow himself is there, wheeling and curveting in all his buoyant grace, but the wind which accelerates his speed, and the rippling wheat field he loves to woo. the sonnet must be read in its entirety, and to recall it calls for no apology; it becomes the more beautiful the more frequently it is read:

full often as i rove by path or stile

to watch the harvest ripening in the vale,

slowly and sweetly, like a growing smile—

a smile that ends in laughter—the quick gale

upon the breadths of gold-green wheat descends;

while still the swallow, with unbaffled grace,

about his viewless quarry dips and bends—

and all the fine excitement of the chase

lies in the hunter’s beauty; in the eclipse

of that brief shadow how the barley’s beard

tilts at the passing gloom, and wild rose dips

among the white-tops in the ditches reared;

and hedgerow’s flowery breast of lacework stirs

faintly in that full wind that rocks the outstanding firs.

201truly boileau was right in his affirmation—a faultless sonnet is in itself worth a long poem; and asselineau—fine sonnets, like all beautiful things in this world, are without price. no less beautiful is turner’s companion sonnet, a summer twilight—an intaglio cut in green jade—where the bat’s flitting shadow, instead of the swallow’s flashing wing, imparts life and motion to the scene.

the first lady-bugs, called forth by the grateful warmth, have left their hibernacle. the first wasps and blue-bottle flies are buzzing and bumping against the south window panes. i catch the first tremolo of the toads and piercing treble of the hylodes.

my first green bullfrog, too, “whom the muses have ordained to sing for aye.” again i hear his grand diapason, just as i heard it last year and every year before as long as i can remember. apparently from the same place in the marsh, amid the pond-weeds and water-plantains, where he suns himself and dozes by day, and launches his maestoso at night. i wonder if it is really the same frog, with his great yellow ears and blinking eyes, and if ever he grows old? it is the old voice from the old place, more powerful and sonorous than the voices of his fellows. what a fine time he has of it—slumbering in the ooze throughout the 202winter, while i am shaking with the cold; cool and comfortable throughout the summer, when i am sweltering with the heat; with nothing to do but bask and bathe, or thrust out his long tongue for the flies that are foolish enough to think him asleep. i heard him just two days earlier this year than last, may 14, ten days later than the first swallow to make his presence known. it is said he must thrice put on his spectacles ere he permanently deserts his couch in the mire—i.e., look through the ice three times before he rises with triumphant song. he is invariably the latest of the spring choristers, and at once his magnificent basso completes the vernal pastoral.

i wish i might obtain the recipe of his spring bitters. is it water-cresses or water-plantain? it is evident he grows younger with advancing years. “the croaking of frogs,” said martin luther, “edifies nothing at all; it is mere sophistry and fruitless.” but, unlike the frog, luther did not relish a diet of worms; and i am not sure that the woodcuts of the old reformer do not resemble the head of my friend of the swamp, whose melody floats so serenely through the summer dusks. horace, generally correct, was wrong with respect to the frog:

... ranæque palustres

avertunt somnos.

203the frog’s is a somnolent voice if heard at a proper distance. one should not expect harmony from wind instruments in the first row of the orchestra chairs. if one’s frogs annoy one, he should remove his swamp or his house. the orchestra of nature calls for its bassoon and its cymbals—the bullfrog and the cicada.

a new poet has recently appeared in the dominion. among his many poems of pronounced freshness and beauty is one on the frog—more strictly speaking, five poems, for the panegyric consists of five connected sonnets. not alone does this graceful lyrist and keen interpreter of nature place the frog as the grand diurnal musician of spring, but he accords him a no less exalted place as a soothing minstrel of the estival night. i should be guilty of ingratitude to my resonant friend of the swamp did i not append the fourth sonnet of the musical quintet:

and when day passed and over heaven’s height,

thin with the many stars and cool with dew,

the fingers of the deep hours slowly drew

the wonder of the ever-healing night,

no grief or loneliness or rapt delight

or weight of silence ever brought to you

slumber or rest; only your voices grew

more high and solemn; slowly, with hushed flight,

ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn,

nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes

and with your countless clear antiphonies

filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn,

204last risen, found you with its first pale gleam,

still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.[16]

16. among the millet, and other poems. by archibald lampman. ottawa: j. durie and son. 1888. pp. 151.

clearly horace was at fault. the greeks thought better of the musical piper of the marsh; but it has remained for the canadian poet to chant more sweetly of him than theocritus and aristophanes.

after the treble of the hylodes, suddenly the first bee hums by in quest of the awaiting flower. the first butterfly flutters past, the first night-hawk booms, the first bat hunts against the crimson afterglow, and, behold! it is spring. “the weather of the renouveau,” old ronsard hymned it—the miracle of the sunshine, the south wind, and the shower.