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Excerpt from Summer Rest
But Spring in the country, 0 season rightly named -a goddess-queen glides through the heavens, and the earth and all that is therein springs up to meet her and do obeisance. We, gross and heavy, blind and deaf, are Slow to catch the ¿utter of her robes, the music of her footfall, the odor of her breath, the brightness of her far off coming. We call it cold and winter Still. We huddle about the fires and wonder if the spring will never come; and all the while, 10, the spring is here! Ten thousand watching eyes, ten thou sand waiting ears, laid along the ground, have signalled the royal approach. Ten thousand times ten thousand voices sound the notes of preparation. Every tiny sleeping germ of animal and of vege table life springs to its feet, wide awake, girded for duty, vigilant but unhurried, eager, active, and most orderly. N ow you must be wide awake too, or you will miss the sights.
And each Spring is more lovely than the last. Tenderer green on the earth, intenser blue in the sky, deeper colors, sweeter voices, busier feet, happier hearts, as the Summer comes softly singing through the meadows and pouring her fragrance on the air. Every year it ¿oats into my thought, I will write something beautiful about the sum mer, from pure longing to celebrate its loveliness in gratitude for its behests but I never write the beautiful thing, no, nor ever shall. For the sum mer absorbs you unawares. The birds and the bees and the buds are so busy; the lambs in the fields, the fishes in the brooks, the cattle on a thousand hills, with them is no] delay nor excus ing. And while you are living all these dear dumb lives, gradually the clouds grow leaden, the wind whistles, the leaves shiver and shrivel and fall, and of a sudden you look up to find that the summer is gone. Now, therefore, fair goddess, take, I pray, my speechless enjoyment for meet celebration, and count me no ingrate because I cannot say the thing I would.
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