rass, that lifted its
first green blade from the matted _debris_ of the old year's decay, bore
my spirit upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven.

I love to trace the break of spring step by step: I love even those long
rain-storms, that sap the icy fortresses of the lingering winter,--that
melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks,--that make
the pools heave up their glassy cerements of ice, and hurry down the
crashing fragments into the wastes of ocean.

I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the stained
snow-banks, shrinking from the grass; and by the gentle drip of the
cottage-eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes by a southern wall,
where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth and where the
frail anemone, or the faint blush of the arbutus, in the midst of the
bleak March atmosphere, will touch your heart, like a hope of Heaven in
a field of graves! Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches
of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the
last snow-drifts, reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the
slope of northern hills, leaking away their life.

Then the grass at your door grows into the color of the sprouting grain,
and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the
wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks
string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in
pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their
spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the
minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple.
Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish
tufts of a modest verdure, which by-and-by will be long and glossy
leaves. The dogwood pitches his broad, white tent in the edge of the
forest; the dandelions lie along the hillocks, like stars in a sky of
green; and the wild cherry, growing in all the hedge-rows, without other
culture than God's, lifts up to Him thankfully its tremulous white
fingers.

Amid all this come the rich rains of spring. The affections of a boy
grow up with tears to water them; and the year blooms with showers. But
the clouds hover over an April sky timidly, like shadows upon innocence.
The showers come gently, and drop daintily to the earth,--with now and
then a glimpse of sunshine to make the drops bright--like so many tears
of joy.

The rai