April is also the month of the new furrow.  As soon as the frost is gone and the ground settled, the plow is started upon the hill, and at each bout I see its brightened mould-board flash in the sun.  Where the last remnants of the snowdrift lingered yesterday the plow breaks the sod to-day.  Where the drift was deepest the grass is pressed flat, and there is a deposit of sand and earth blown from the fields to windward.  Line upon line the turf is reversed, until there stands out of the neutral landscape a ruddy square visible for miles, or until the breasts of the broad hills glow like the breasts of the robins.

Then who would not have a garden in April? to rake together the rubbish and burn it up, to turn over the renewed soil, to scatter the rich compost, to plant the first seed, or bury the first tuber!  It is not the seed that is planted, any more than it is I that is planted; it is not the dry stalks and weeds that are burned up, any more than it is my gloom and regrets that are consumed.  An April smoke makes a clean harvest.

I think April is the best month to be born in.  One is just in time, so to speak, to catch the first train, which is made up in this month.  My April chickens 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 of 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.

V 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,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.”

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
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.

“Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

“Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

“Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

“From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.”