The Saunterer

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AWAKENING. H ! for the life of the wild ! ? The stirrings of life in the woods, The greeting the birds give to spring, The joy of the heart of the child, The gayety brisk on the wing, The flowers astir 'neath their hoods, The wild wood, the bird, and the child, ? For Nature awaking her broods To blossom, to breed, and to sing; In bliss upon bliss overpiled, To greet the dear breath of the spring, ? Earth throbbing in happiest moods Into greenness and melody wild ! APRIL COQUETRY. ]HERE is often some courage needed, between blasts of the chill east and the wild northwest, to doff our hats to Spring. One is so dubious as to her identity; we are almost sure that we recognize that grace and sweetness and coy beauty, ? and then a gust comes, and it proves only an icicle- hung winter masquerader that we have been smiling at. And when at last we find the gentle creature, she is so shy and elusive, and so abounds in quaint mocking surprises, and yet is so bright, busy and hopeful, and so liberal in promises, ? that we are of a mind to say, with the o'er-teased lover, There is no living with thee, or without thee. Dare we yet speak confidently? Is it ? is it not? Spring, whose green robes are brushing the sunny grass and the new wheat, whose voice echoes in the bird-calls, whose nods and becks and wreathed smiles accost us at the edge of the budding wood ? When the sky wears a blue so deep and glowing, it takes more than a snowy flavor in the pure fresh air to allow us to doubt. It is more than the uncertain glory of an April day; it is the new year that Nature always begins about now. The dullest of city streets, APRIL COQUETRY. 17 mere brick and mortar, have their own way of observing the season; they have out the watering-carts, laying the dust; signs of spr...