I love the gentle thaws that you can grace, day by day, by the stained snow-banks, shrinking from the grass; and, by the gentle drip of the cottage-eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes by a southern wall, where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth, and where the frail anemone, or the faint blush of the arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere, will touch your heart, like a hope of Heaven, in a field of graves! Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow-drifts, reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope of northern hills, Jeaking away their life.
Then, the grass at your door grows into the color of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell, and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparking oriole picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple. Finally, the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with greyish
