Ah, how wonderful is the advent of the spring!--
the great annual miracle of the blossoming of Aaron's
rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of branches!
--the gentle progression and growth of herbs,
flowers, trees,--gentle, and yet irrepressible,--
which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like
love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by
any human power, because itself is divine power. If
spring came but once a century, instead of once a
year, or burst forth with a sound of an earthquake
and not in silence, what wonder and expectation
would there be in all hearts to behold the miraculous
change!
But now the silent succession suggests nothing
but necessity. To most men, only the cessation of
the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual
exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than
its withdrawal would be. We are like children who
are astonished and delighted only by the second-hand
of the clock, not by the hour-hand.
In the fields and woods, meanwhile, there were
other signs and signals of the summer. The darkening
foliage; the embrowning grain; the golden dragonfly
haunting the blackberry bushes; the cawing
crows, that looked down from the mountain on the
cornfield, and waited day after day for the scarecrow
to finish his work and depart; and the smoke of far-off
burning woods, that pervaded the air and hung
in purple haze about the summits of the mountains,
--these were the vaunt-couriers and attendants of
the hot August.
The brown autumn came. Out of doors, it brought
to the fields the prodigality of the golden harvest,--
to the forest, revelations of light,--and to the sky,
the sharp air, the morning mist, the red clouds at
evening. Within doors, the sense of seclusion, the
stillness of closed and curtained windows, musings by
the fireside, books, friends, conversation, and the long,
meditative evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease
of toil,--to the scholar, that sweet delirium of
the brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought
the wild duck back to the reedy marshes of the south;
it brought the wild song back to the fervid brain of the
poet. Without, the village street was paved with gold;
the river ran red with the reflection of the leaves.
Within, the faces of friends brightened the gloomy
walls; the returning footsteps of the long-absent
gladdened the threshold; and all the sweet amenities
of social life again resumed their interrupted reign.
The first snow came. How beautiful it was, falling
so silently, all day long, all night long, on the
mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the
living, on the graves of the dead! All white save
the river, that marked its course by a winding black
line across the landscape; and the leafless trees, that
against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the
wonderful beauty and intricacy of their branches!
What silence, too, came with the snow, and what
seclusion! Every sound was muffled, every noise
changed to something soft and musical. No more
trampling hoofs,--no more rattling wheels! Only
the chiming sleigh bells, beating as swift and merrily
as the hearts of children.
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