XII

THE COMING OF SUMMER

Who shall say when one season ends and another begins? Only the
almanac-makers can fix these dates. It is like saying when
babyhood ends and childhood begins, or when childhood ends and
youth begins. To me spring begins when the catkins on the alders
and the pussy-willows begin to swell; when the ice breaks up on
the river and the first sea-gulls come prospecting northward.
Whatever the date--the first or the middle or the last of
March--when these signs appear, then I know spring is at hand.
Her first birds--the bluebird, the song sparrow, the robin, the
red-shouldered starling--are here or soon will be. The crows have
a more confident caw, the sap begins to start in the sugar maple,
the tiny boom of the first bee is heard, the downy woodpecker
begins his resonant tat, tat, tat, on the dry limbs, and the
cattle in the barnyard low long and loud with wistful looks
toward the fields.

The first hint of summer comes when the trees are fully fledged
and the nymph Shadow is born. See her cool circles again beneath
the trees in the field, or her deeper and cooler retreats in the
woods. On the slopes, on the opposite side of the river, there
have been for months under the morning and noon sun only slight
shadow tracings, a fretwork of shadow lines; but some morning in
May I look across and see solid masses of shade falling from the
trees athwart the sloping turf. How the eye revels in them! The
trees are again clothed and in their right minds; myriad leaves
rustle in promise of the coming festival. Now the trees are
sentient beings; they have thoughts and fancies; they stir with
emotion; they converse together; they whisper or dream in the
twilight; they struggle and wrestle with the storm.

"Caught and cuff'd by the gale,"

Tennyson says.

Summer always comes in the person of June, with a bunch of
daisies on her breast and clover blossoms in her hands. A new
chapter in the season is opened when these flowers appear. One
says to himself, "Well, I have lived to see the daisies again and
to smell the red clover." One plucks the first blossoms tenderly
and caressingly. What memories are stirred in the mind by the
fragrance of the one and the youthful face of the other! There is
nothing else like that smell of the clover: it is the maidenly
breath of summer; it suggests all fresh, buxom, rural things. A
field of ruddy, blooming clover, dashed or sprinkled here and
there with the snow