* * * * *
[Footnote 1: This and the following poems are used by the courteous
permission of the publishers, Messrs. Bobbs, Merrill, & Co.,
Indianapolis.]
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
AMERICA, 1807-1882
KAVANAGH
Ah, how wonderful is the advent of the spring!--
the great annual miracle of the blossoming of Aaron's
rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of branches!
--the gentle progression and growth of herbs,
flowers, trees,--gentle, and yet irrepressible,--
which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like
love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by
any human power, because itself is divine power. If
spring came but once a century, instead of once a
year, or burst forth with a sound of an earthquake
and not in silence, what wonder and expectation
would there be in all hearts to behold the miraculous
change!
But now the silent succession suggests nothing
but necessity. To most men, only the cessation of
the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual
exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than
its withdrawal would be. We are like children who
are astonished and delighted only by the second-hand
of the clock, not by the hour-hand.
In the fields and woods, meanwhile, there were
other signs and signals of the summer. The darkening
foliage; the embrowning grain; the golden dragonfly
haunting the blackberry bushes; the cawing
crows, that looked down from the mountain on the
cornfield, and waited day after day for the scarecrow
to finish his work and depart; and the smoke of far-off
burning woods, that pervaded the air and hung
in purple haze about the summits of the mountains,
--these were the vaunt-couriers and attendants of
the hot August.
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