Surely a change has come over our fancies. The
seasons are little to us now. We are nearly as comfortable in winter
as in summer, or in spring. Nay, we have begun, of late, to grumble
at the two latter as much as at the former, and talk (and not without
excuse at times) of 'the treacherous month of May,' and of 'summer
having set in with its usual severity.' We work for the most part in
cities and towns, and the seasons pass by us unheeded. May and June
are spent by most educated people anywhere rather than among birds
and flowers. They do not escape into the country till the elm hedges
are growing black, and the song-birds silent, and the hay cut, and
all the virgin bloom of the country has passed into a sober and
matronly ripeness--if not into the sere and yellow leaf. Our very
landscape painters, till Creswick arose and recalled to their minds
the fact that trees were sometimes green, were wont to paint few but
brown autumnal scenes. As for the song of birds, of which in the
middle age no poet could say enough, our modern poets seem to be
forgetting that birds ever sing.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25