For a week I heard the circling,groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings,seeking its companion,and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain.In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks,and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing,though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any,and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came.In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season,and birds fly with song and glancing plumage,and plants spring and bloom,and winds blow,to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature.
As every season seems best to us in its turn,so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.-
“Eurus ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regna recessit,
Persidaque,et radiis juga subdita matutinis.”
“The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathan kingdom,
And the Persian,and the ridges placed under the morning rays.
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Man was born.Whether that Artificer of things,
The origin of a better world,made him from the divine seed;
Or the earth,being recent and lately sundered from the high
Ether,retained some seeds of cognate heaven.”
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.We should be blessed if we lived in the present always,and took advantage of every accident that befell us,like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it;and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities,which we call doing our duty.We loiter in winter while it is already spring.In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven.Such a day is a truce to vice.While such a sun holds out to burn,the vilest sinner may return.Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief,a drunkard,or a sensualist,and merely pitied or despised him,and despaired of the world;but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning,re-creating the world,and you meet him at some serene work,and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day,feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy,and all his faults are forgotten.There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him,but even a savor of holiness groping for expression,blindly and ineffectually perhaps,like a new-born instinct,and for a short hour the south hillsides echoes to no vulgar jest.You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life,tender and fresh as the youngest plant.Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord.Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors，-why the judge does not dismiss his case,-why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation!It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them,nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.
“A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning,causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice,one approaches a little the primitive nature of man,as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled.In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and destroys them.
“After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing themselves,then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them.As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them,then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute.Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute,think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason.Are those the true and natural sentiments of man?”
“The Golden Age was first created which without any avenger
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.
Punishment and fear were not;nor were threatening words read
On suspended brass;nor did the suppliant crowd fear
The words of their judge;but were safe without an avenger.
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended
To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,
And mortals knew no shores but their own.
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There was eternal spring,and placid zephyrs with warm
Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed.”