THE APRIL MOMENT
[Illustration]
Survivor of so much that her fear is gone, triumphant April answers the
dark powers as if they could never speak again. Spring after spring she
stands among flying petals and smiles at the last bitter winds. She will
not grant that the green earth was ever vanquished, fiercely alive as
now it is. Scornfully the new silver bloom on the clover sheds the
relentless rain. Undaunted, reaffirming, she summons all beauty of
color, music, and fragrance beneath her banners, with a vitality so
profound and impregnable that more than other months she is careless of
man's sympathy. April, preoccupied, hastens from crumbling furrow to
meadows that shout the coming of the green. Intense and too eager for
tenderness, she craves no admiration. Quite without excuse, the song
sparrow sits on a wine-colored willow twig and sings frantically. Anyone
has as good a reason for ecstasy as he--merely that the dumb struggle is
ended and the long suns have returned in splendor.
Contemplative between their dark exotic leaves, dogtooth violets fill
the light-flecked hollows. Spring beauties open warily at daybreak to
show stamens of deep rose. Where imperious amber waters go foaming
through the swamp, spendthrift gold of cowslips is swept down to the
rivers, and budded branches that leaned too close above the ripple are
shut out from the sun world for a while. Mauve and canary slippers are
waiting for the fairy queen where our wild orchid of the North dangles
them on remote knolls, but they are usually found and borne off by some
one for whom they are in no way suitable. Translucent young leaves
glitter beside the stream's path. Dandelion rosettes appear with serene
impartiality on guarded lawn and mountain pasture, where steal also the
polite but persistent "pussy tiptoes," asserting the right to display
white leaves in spring, if so a plant should choose. The snail has
deserted his shell and gone forth to take the air at the risk of being
plowed under. None of April's children remember or foresee. The vivid
present is enough.
The apple boughs are inlaid with coral. The peach is a cloud of dawn,
and petals of the forward cherry and pear are floating reluctantly down.
Wild-fruit trees, mysteriously planted, are misty white above the
woodland thicket--scented crabapple and twisted branch of plum. This is
the month of blossoms, as May is the month of shimmering leaves and June
of the fruitless flower.
The blackbird swings at the foamy crest of the haw, disturbed by a
thousand delights, and notes too few to tell them. The crow hoarsely
mentions his rapture as he flaps above the moving harrow, and the new
lambs look on in a tremulous, wounded manner while the famished
woodchuck makes away with the cloverheads they were just about to
endeavor to bite off. Uncertainly the wondering calves proceed about the
pasture, not yet at the stage in life where they will skip with touching
curiosity after every object that stirs. At dusk and glistening morning
there are bird songs such as only April hears--the outburst of welcome to
the light, and the sleepy fluting of the robins when the sky turns to a
soft prism in the west. Fainter, more melancholy even than in March, is
the twilight lament of the peepers. They are alien to the aria of April.
New England's forget-me-nots are fleet turquoise in the grasses; New
England's arbutus flowers lie flushed pearls among the ancient leaves;
but everywhere are the violets of three colors--yellow for the pool's
edge, white among the bog lands, and blue as pervasive as the sunlight
on hill slope, road bank, and forest floor. And there are violets of an
unfathomable blue, sprinkled with white like wisps of cloud against far
mountains. Some grow close to earth, taught by past dismay; others,
long-stemmed and sweet, will live and suffer and mend their ways next
year. The windflower meets the breeze, a slim princess, incredibly
fragile, yet broken less easily than the strong tulip, vaguely touched
with rose or white as bloodroot. Tulips dwell not only on the ground;
they have parted great, opaque petals at the tops of trees, startling to
see in the leafless wood. Watercress glitters in the cold streams where
trout, winter-weary, are on patrol for those flies now magnificent in
their jeweled dress of spring. The first oak leaves are delicately
crimson at the end of the bough. Disregard, amid this pageantry of _la
vita nuova_, the outrageous satire of brown skeleton "fingers" that
point stiffly up through the shining blades of grass. If they seem to be
a chilling cynicism of Nature, who has not found an April dandelion
telling a braver story through winter snow?
Cedar and balsam twig are golden-tipped. Nothing is unchanged. Immortal
wings that beat through February gales to reach this land of their
tradition are fluttering now about the building of the nest. The smooth
chimney swift flashes above the barn and is gone. With drooping wings he
hangs poised against the daffodil sky in his evening play. Peaceably
among the lilacs the contented bluebird sits, though through bulb, root,
and chrysalis has passed the irresistible current that will let no
sharer of the earth be still--not stone nor seed nor man. Into this
forced march April steps with gladness, hailing the order, predestined
to change. Joining her unresisting, take for your own the moment of
escape which the singer in the blossoms freely claims. Life's fullness
is measured by these salvaged April moments when suddenly joy becomes a
simple and close-dwelling thing, when for a merciful, lighted instant
the impersonal and endless beauty of the world seems enough.