n
And the busy hum of men,"

or of automobiles. I must plough. It is the April wind that wakes the
call--

"Zephirus eek, with his sweete breeth"--

and many hearing it long to "goon on pilgrimages," or to the Maine
woods to fish, or, waiting until the 19th, to leave Boston by boat and
go up and down the shore to see how fared their summer cottages during
the winter storms; some even imagine they have malaria and long for
bitters--as many men as many minds when

"The time of the singing of birds is come
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

But as for me it is neither bitters, nor cottages, nor trout, nor

"ferne halwes couth in sondry landes"

that I long for: but simply for the soil, for the warming, stirring
earth, for my mother. It is back to her breast I would go, back to the
wide sweet fields, to the slow-moving team and the lines about my
shoulder, to the even furrow rolling from the mould-board, to the taste
of the soil, the sight of the sky, the sound of the robins and
bluebirds and blackbirds, and the ringing notes of Highhole over the
sunny fields.

I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth, and as I follow
through the fresh and fragrant furrow I am planted with every footstep,
growing, budding, blooming into a spirit of the spring. I can catch
the blackbirds ploughing, I can turn under with my furrow the laughter
of the flowers, the very joy of the skies. But if I so much as turn in
my tracks, the blackbirds scatter; if I shout, Highhole is silent; if I
chase the breeze, it runs away; I might climb into the humming maples,
might fill my hands with arbutus and bloodroot, might run and laugh
aloud with the light; as if with feet I could overtake it, could catch
it in my hands, and in my heart could hold it all--this living earth,
shining sky, flowers, buds, voices, colors, odors--this spring!

But I can plough--while the blackbirds come close behind me in the
furrow; and I can be the spring.

I could plough, I mean, when I had a plough. But I sold it for five
dollars and bought a second-hand automobile for fifteen hundred--as
everybody else has. So now I do as everybody else does,--borrow my
neighbor's plough, or still worse, get my neighbor to do my ploughing,
being still blessed with a neighbor so steadfast and simple as to
possess a plough. But I must plough or my children's children will
never live to have children,--they will have motor cars instead. Th