IV APRIL

If we represent the winter of our northern climate by a rugged snow-clad mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then the intermediate belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand for spring, with March reaching well up into the region of the snows, and April lapping well down upon the greening fields and unloosened currents, not beyond the limits of winter’s sallying storms, but well within the vernal zone,—­within the reach of the warm breath and subtle, quickening influences of the plain below.  At its best, April is the tenderest of tender salads made crisp by ice or snow water.  Its type is the first spear of grass.  The senses—­sight, hearing, smell—­are as hungry for its delicate and almost spiritual tokens as the cattle are for the first bite of its fields.  How it touches one and makes him both glad and sad!  The voices of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons sweeping across the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of the first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the campfire in the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,—­ how these things and others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear!  April is my natal month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at each return of it.  Its name has an indescribable charm to me.  Its two syllables are like the calls of the first birds,—­like that of the phoebe-bird, or of the meadowlark.  Its very snows are fertilizing, and are called the poor man’s manure.

Then its odors!  I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribable odors,—­the perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots and rootlets, of the mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows.  No other month has odors like it.  The west wind the other day came fraught with a perfume that was to the sense of smell what a wild and delicate strain of music is to the ear.  It was almost transcendental.  I walked across the hill with my nose in the air taking it in.  It lasted for two days.  I imagined it came from the willows of a distant swamp, whose catkins were affording the bees their first pollen:  or did it come from much farther,—­from beyond the horizon, the accumulated breath of innumerable farms and budding forests?  The main characteristic of these April odors is their uncloying freshness.  They are not sweet, they are oftener bitter, they are penetrating and lyrical.  I know well the odors of May and June, of the world of meadows and orchards bursting into bloom, but they are not so ineffable and immaterial and so stimulating to the sense as the incense of April.