Busy indeed at this vernal season was the mysterious Nurse of God's little
world. Her hands rested not from her labors. She worked strange wonders on
the waste, by magic of a million breaking buds, by burying of the dead, by
wafting of subtle pollen-life from blossom to blossom. And in cliffs above
the green waters the nests of her wild-fowl were already lined with wool
and feather; neither were her samphires forgotten in their dizzy
habitations; and salt spray sprinkled her uncurling sea ferns in caves and
crannies where they grew. She laughed at the porpoises rolling their fat
sides into sunshine; she brought the sea-otter where it should find fish
for its young; she led giant congers to drowned men; she patted the sleek
head of the sad-eyed seal. Elsewhere she showed the father-hawk a leveret
crouching in his form; she took young rabbits to the new spring grass; the
fox to the fowl, the fly to the spider, the blight to the bud. Her weakly
nestlings fell from tree and cliff to die, but she beheld unmoved; her
weasel sucked the gray-bird's egg, yet no hand was raised against the
thief, no voice comforted the screaming agony of the mother. With the van
of her legions she moved, and the suffering stragglers cried in vain, for
her concerns were not with them. She did no right, she worked no evil; she
was not cruel, neither shall we call her kind. The servant of God was she,
then as always, heedful of His utterances, obedient to His laws.
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