"And in thy reign of blast and storm,
      Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day
    When the changed winds are soft and warm,
      And heaven puts on the blue of May."

From the summit of a thinly-treed hill we look across a wide valley on the right which gradually slopes up to a high ridge three miles away.  On the left there is a clear view for fully twenty miles, out to where the lavender haze hangs softly on the forest-fringed horizon.  The plowed fields lie mellow and chocolate-hued in the sunlight and the russet meadows are beginning to show a faint undertone of green.  The golden green of the willow fences which separate some of the fields shines from afar in the abundant light and there is a quickening crimson in the tops of the red maple groves around the homesteads.  The deep blue of the high-domed sky gives a glory to the landscape.  The few, far clouds, soft and white, float slowly in the azure sea and now and then approach the throne of the king of day, sending dark shadows chasing the sunlight over the smiling fields.  When these shadows reach the nearer woodlands across the valley on the right it is as if a moving belt of dark pines was swiftly passing through the deciduous forest.  We think of Birnam wood removing to Dunsinane, but that was trivial compared with this.  The dark belt of shadow makes a strong and beautiful contrast to the reddish brown and gray of the winter woods.

The river is more than bank full.  Shut in on one side by the high ridge upon which we are standing it has spread over half a mile of bottom on the other side.  Once more, after many months of waiting we rejoice in the gleam of its waters.  The broad valley, which has so long been paved with white, is bottomed with amethyst now, the fainter reflection of the azure sky above.  The trees which have so long stood comfortless again see their doubles in the waters below.  The huge gray trunks of the water elms and the silver maples, the red rags of the birches and the delicate tracery of their spray, the ruby gold of the willows, the shining white of the sycamores, the ashen green of the poplars and the dark crimson of the wild rose and the red osier dogwood,—­all these are reflected as from a vast mirror.

There is not a ripple on the surface.  But anon a belated ice floe comes down the main channel and shows how swiftly the waters are flowing now that they once more move “unvexed to the sea.”  There are still some masses hugging the shore.  One by one they slip into the waters and float away,—­just as a man’s prejudices and delusions are the last to leave him after the light of truth and the warmth of love have set his soul free from the bondage of error and wrong.