est expansion, of the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the year. The birds sing in chorus in the spring—Just as children prattle; the brooks run full—like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop easily—as young tears flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the mind of a boy.
Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the warmth of life. The old year,—say what the chronologists will,—lingers upon the very lap of spring; and is only fairly gone, when the blossoms of April have strewn their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the blue-birds have chanted his requiem. It always seems to me as if an access of life came with the melting of the winter's snows; and as if every rootlet of grass that lifted its first green blade from the matted debris of the old year's decay, bore my spirit upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven.
I love to trace the break of spring step by step: I love even those long rain-storms that sap the icy fortresses of the lingering winter,—that melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks;—that make the pools heave up their glassy cerements of ice, and hurry down the crashing fragments into the wastes of ocean.
