always turn out best. They get an early start; they have rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand the heavy dews, or withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all nature starts with you. You have not come out your hibernaculum too early or too late; the time is ripe, and if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season. SPRING POEMS. THERE is no month oftener on the tongues of the poets than April. It is the initiative month; it opens the door of the seasons; the interest and expectations of the untried, the untasted, lurk in it. "From you have I been absent in the spring," says Shakespeare in one of his sonnets, "When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him." 66 The following poem from Tennyson's "In Memoriam," might be headed “ April,” and serve as descriptive of parts of our season: "Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now bourgeons every maze of quick By ashen roots the violets blow. "Now rings the woodland loud and long, "Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea; "Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives The happy birds, that change their sky "Can trouble live with April days?" Yet they are not all jubilant chords that this season "The strange, sweet days are here again The songs which trembled on our lips This poet has also given a touch of spring in her 1 |