Chapter II: A Later Spring

A flash of indigo in the air,
A streak of orange edged with black!
A bluebird skimmed the spruces there,
A redstart followed in his track.

The light grows in the eastern skies,
The deeper shadows are withdrawn;
From marsh and swamp the vapors rise
In the cool cloisters of the dawn.

What loom, a-weaving on the land,
Such color and fragrance fuses!
Magenta and white on moss and sand,
Azaleas, arethusas.

And higher up along the steeps,
The pink of mountain-laurel;
While lower down the yellow creeps
From celandine and sorrel.

Sea-foam or snow-drift, flecked with spurt
Of flame, upon the grasses spread.
The snow is foam of mitre-wort;
The flame, the ragged robin's red.

..............

Where sits the lily of the morning dew
When light winds waken,
And gems that the violets hold
Gently are shaken
To crystalline purple and blue,
And emerald, crimson and gold
From the heart of the rose unfold,
And burst into view;

There, at the dawn's first blush,
The notes of a brown thrasher fall,
And the importunate voice of the thrush
Blends with a tannager's call;
There, under a dragon-fly's wings,
A stream carols by with sweet noise,
And slowly a daffodil swings
To a humming-bird's marvellous poise.

(_Thaddeus, walking through a field in the direction of Julian's home. The day is warm and sunny. A rapid stream, a short distance away, flows through a valley whose banks slope down from small hills covered with evergreen. Afar off, the land is high and forest-clad. At a bend of the stream he suddenly meets Julian._)

THADDEUS.

There is a quality in this air that stirs
The blood as readily as the balsam sap.
What brew, what chemistry; what hand is this
That grips the pestle? Never was the grass
So green upon the fields. A miracle!
Throughout arterial nature, marble-cold
And pale, are heard the joyous sounds of life
Revived; earth's wells are opened in the vales;
Through ice-clad mountains, chiselled by the hands
Of northern blasts, the gurgling waters run
In stream and torrent, and in the mad plunge
Of cataract. Beyond the snow-capped ranges
Lusty young rivers tear and strain at the dugs
Of the foot-hills, and parting, force their pace
Through gorge and valley to the open sea.
Life, boundless, keen, ecstatic, uncontrolled!
Vast, heaving, surging life, strung to great thews,
Rapt in wide wonderments. Flail, life of Spring!
Born of prophetic gales and plangent shocks,
That rouse the torpor of earth's granite veins,
And sluggard eyes. Glorious in resurrection!
Thou peerless colorist of nature's life!
With what unrivaled hands the lines are drawn.
The shadows set, and the rich hues enwrought
Upon how great a canvas! The far climb
Majestic of fresh-foliaged ash and elm
Along the mountain crags; the river banks
Where the white spray falls softly on the iris,
And violets creep along the sides; the gift
Of minted treasure on the open fields,
Where bloom those golden legions of the earth--
The daffodils and lowland marigolds;
Cerulean tints that light our common paths.
That bless our road-sides, cheer our vacant wastes;
Bluets and harebells and the lilac bloom;
Orchards a-flame beneath a setting sun,
And, trailing slow around moss-covered rocks.
The flower of May superlatively veined.
Come! Leave your tents, O mortals, gather here
In Nature's high rotunda, crystal-domed,
And offer praises .... Julian, give me
Your hand. We meet under new skies to-day.
The times are changed; the earth renews her face;
There is a fine contagion in the spring
For heavy hearts.

JULIAN.

You would infect the blood
Of an old man.

THADDEUS.

Come, Julian! In this life
There is an unslain good that has outlived
All floods and fires. There are undaunted spirits
The age has not destroyed. I have seen them breathe
Upon dry bones until they leaped with sinew;
Even flotsam by their touch was salvable.
No life, however craven at the face,
But found a courage stirring at the core.
The groundwork's there to build a structure on;
The hand that yesterday tore like an eagle's claw
Now pours in balm to-day, blesses and cures.
There is a restoration in a smile
We knew not of; we had forgotten it--
But wings unseen were flying in the night.

JULIAN.

I would there was a rock from which man's hopes
Might never more be swept, or that his blood
Might always bathe his heart with healthy stream.
But those alternate currents, like the seasons,
Have been our fateful legacy through all time.
What power is this you speak of, that the dark
May sudden blaze with light before the morn
Is ushered in at nature's call? Is this
The ultimate conquest of her will, that day
Shall not know supersession by the night,
With earth's diurnal axis overruled?

THADDEUS.

Have you not noticed, standing in the aisles
Of some high-vaulted temple when the massed
And reverent throngs were hushed in expectation,
How a great organ poured forth like a flood
Its spell of music as the master's hands
Swept the wide boards? What power over the soul
To lift its hopes, to plant its aspirations
In the rich soil of heaven came from the touch!
But let untutored fingers meet the keys,
And the rapt ear is split by harsh discords.
Are not the strings, the instrument, the same
With either press? But how extremes depend
Upon the craft of him who plays. Life's songs
From baser jars and fretted failures range
Along the gamut of their enterprise,
In spiral movement to such high refrains
As could, with buoyant amplitude of roll,
Lift up the souls of sinking men, and float
The world's grey cares on seas of evening-calm...
Have you not heard such music when the winds
Are given boundless space wherein to blow
Upon the greenness of the earth? They pass,
And from the meadows and the valley-slopes
The latent rhythms of the daisies blend
With the low rustle of the sedge. They pass
Again, and lo, in grander orchestra,
The pines lift up their voices on the hills.
A blade of grass, a daisy or a pine,
A wave, a waterfall, a heart-string, these,
Tuned to the world's blood rhythms, now await.
As cords you touch, as reeds you breathe upon,
The rising pulses of the morning air.

JULIAN.

Dust gathers in my mouth. I cannot speak
What I would say. Whether it is the drought
Of age, or some strange filtrate of the past
That sets a parchèd seal upon the lips,
I do not know. It may be that from thistles
I tried to gather figs, or where I looked
Before I plucked, I said the vines were dry.
Now I am old. I find the roadways blocked,
And memory, ranging through the fungus years,
Finds but the husks where it would take the fruit.
And yet there is a knocking in this clay--
A restless flame--something that, if it could,
Would leap these grammared confines of slow speech,
And give the echo to your dancing words.

THIS BOOK IS A PRODUCTION OF
THE RYERSON PRESS,
TORONTO, CANADA