lso 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,