made, and as good a poem as the man could write himself.  And yet this man—­he goes out of doors without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in three days.  “On the 21st of January,” exclaimed Mercier, “all kings felt for the backs of their necks.”  This might be said of all men in New England in the spring.  This is the season that all the poets celebrate.  Let us suppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a genial spring, and there was a poet who sang of it.  All later poets have sung the same song.  “Voila tout!” That is the root of poetry.

Another delusion.  We hear toward evening, high in air, the “conk” of the wild-geese.  Looking up, you see the black specks of that adventurous triangle, winging along in rapid flight northward.  Perhaps it takes a wide returning sweep, in doubt; but it disappears in the north.  There is no mistaking that sign.  This unmusical “conk” is sweeter than the “kerchunk” of the bull-frog.  Probably these birds are not idiots, and probably they turned back south again after spying out the nakedness of the land; but they have made their sign.  Next day there is a rumor that somebody has seen a bluebird.  This rumor, unhappily for the bird (which will freeze to death), is confirmed.  In less than three days everybody has seen a bluebird; and favored people have heard a robin or rather the yellow-breasted thrush, misnamed a robin in America.  This is no doubt true:  for angle-worms have been seen on the surface of the ground; and, wherever there is anything to eat, the robin is promptly on hand.  About this time you notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the grass has a little color.  But you say that it is the grass of last fall.  It is very difficult to tell when the grass of last fall became the grass of this spring.  It looks “warmed over.”  The green is rusty.  The lilac-buds have certainly swollen a little, and so have those of the soft maple.  In the rain the grass does not brighten as you think it ought to, and it is only when the rain turns to snow that you see any decided green color by contrast with the white.  The snow gradually covers everything very quietly, however.  Winter comes back without the least noise or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable.  Neither party in the fight now makes much fuss over it; and you might think that Nature had surrendered altogether, if you did not find about this time, in the Woods, on the edge of a snow-bank, the modest blossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding their delicious perfume.  The bravest are always the tenderest, says the poet.  The season, in its blind way, is trying to express itself.

And it is assisted.  There is a cheerful chatter in the trees.  The blackbirds have come, and in numbers, households of them, villages of them,—­communes, rather.  They do not believe in God, these black-birds.  They think they can take care of themselves.  We shall see.  But they are well informed.  They arrived just as the last snow-bank melted.  One cannot say now that there is not greenness in the grass; not in the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and banks sloping south.  The dark-spotted leaves of the dog-tooth violet begin to show.  Even Fahrenheit’s contrivance joins in the upward movement:  the mercury has suddenly gone up from thirty degrees to sixty-five degrees.  It is time for the ice-man.  Ice has no sooner disappeared than we desire it.