CHAPTER XVIII
THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS
I. SPRING
“Spring, spring has come, while yet the landscape bears
Its fleecy burden of unmelted snow!
Now may the zephyrs gently ’gin to blow,
To melt the nightingale’s sweet frozen tears.
Too lightly woven must the garments be—
Garments of mist that clothe the coming spring,—
In wild disorder, see them fluttering,
Soon as the zephyr breathes adown the lea!”
Basil Hall Chamberlain
Out of the ugliness of pain beauty may spring,—the child from the travail and suffering of his mother; the picture from that of the artist; the poem, the great book from the hardly-caught, anguish-snatched inspiration, wrought in labour, of its author,—and out of the storm and frost, and the painful melting of winter, spring.
With each birth there must also be love, the courage, the persistency of love, which faces the torture of production, that the child of the
271
