The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-26

ferent-but the elusive, paralyzing
knowledge of inadequate sensibillty
that drifts in with the first days when
the sun shines warmly and the grass
changes its color and the birds their
notes, when there is a feel t. the air
which gets in your joints with sort
OF luxurious pain and stiffness, when
the mistiness of the sky seems almt st
on the point of dissolving into visions
at the horizon, when the eyes wander
into the blue and the brain is always
just on the point, and never in at the
death of the expression of the
thoughts that CULVER around the
shadows of the breeze f1uttsrad leaves
on the sun carpeted ground-and you
stop and look and sigh in pure excess
of happiness and woe?
Or are you of the sort which knows
that if the weather holds good for
one week more the ploughing that has
been held back all winter by the blasts
and the SHOWS and the rains will get a
good start, that the crops may not be
so bad after all; that the season of
rest has passed, and it is time to get
To work, while the ground is moist
and warm and things ready to sprout
and TO be planted?
Or that optimistic individual who
goes to his book and spends the glori-
Gus morning in a musty office over
the ledgers with the unpaid bills ac-
cruing from the low price of Gotten,
Il running hastily home to dinner east
s ing in his brain the eternal question
of sending good money after bad and
blinking at the sunlight with the
conflicting emotion that the Spring
weather is fine for the grade and bad
for the price?
Or. and if you are, you should be de-
ported to Labrador, are you the one
fro
don't want and are afraid to do with
out, and swelters in flannels that you
are afraid to take off, and sees the
promise of the apoplexy of August in
the lover-like caress of today?
1t is not without cause that the
average poet meets the season of his
greatest productiveness in the first
months of the real new year-nor that
he scarcely rises in the attempt above
the WEAKNESS of the common place.
Spring is too big a topic; it was meant
to be felt and not to be sung. 1t is
the visit of the great and all produc-
tive sun to mother earth herself. 1t is
the mystery of the ages encompassed
i'm the deirious joy of a few brief
weeks. Its thrill stirs the universe.
The stars above sing to it's coming.
The trees whisper its hopes. The
heart of all life throbs with the sweet
ness of it's secret, that all-felt conf
dence which the meanest knows and
the best cannot utter Write OF
spring, the birthday of the children
of nature! Wing a poem which could
translate the twitter of the sparrow on
the eavesi Which could catch the
tone and describe the color of the
young leaf, pognantly green, waving
the first few minutes of its existence
in the slow-breathing breath OF the
full breasted day! Which could
measure the activity of the new
swarming ants, coming in serried
columns to new experience born of
primeval emotioni Picture the fash
of a minnow i'm the shadows of the
stream, or set to music the SOFT
splashing gurgle of the water over
rocks, Indicate the alluring moon
hanging with the misty redness OF the
spring i'm the translucent blue of the
nght-as we'll try to put at once ere
alton. history and the first cause into
an epigram!
Ii is the quality of the larger
things that their expression is
not confined to the intellect,
not choice in the selection OF
rare souls which may appreciate them,
but that they strike humanity with
common impression and a oneness of
most humble might meet on a noun
tain top in the glory of the evening,
and feel from the vast mystery of the
valley hiding its face for the night
and the mighty peaks shrouding them
selves with cloud, the same exquisite
Loneliness. the same intake of the
breath at the stress of too-manlfeSt
beauty-yet the one could but IN
small and feeble way Surpass the other
I'm the expression of what he saw ana
what he felt 1t is only with the MINI
utiae that genius has the chance TO air
its graces; for the bigger emotions,
for the primal passions, there is no
actual expression either in words or
paint. TO show these things one must
look to the life that all know, point TO
the experience that all have felt ana,
not himself understanding, create the
illusion of instruction to pupils versed
as we'll as he
1t is here that lies the failure of the
spring poet, yet 1 have no patience
with the cry which would put him to
ridcule. He is merely making the
puny effort to be understood. oblivious
of the fact that we all understand.
Spring is a trickster, like the woman
that she is. She fiatters and allures
and Gains and drives to despair. AL
ways is she on the point of confess
ing, even does she put one off. Follow
me, she whispers and you shall know
life and its meaning. | will teach you
that which lies behind the veil. In
her eyes are the lights of knowledge
and the hints of favors past the wants
of dreams; in her face the promise of
eternal love; in her cool, white hands,
through which she twists the idle
hours of phantasmagoial thought, the
comfort of the slow heaving pillows
of the sea; in the blowing tangle of her
hair, the fragrant hopes of world-old
desires!
And ever she whispers, and leads
and beckons the soul within up to the
lips. and there it sticks! And ever she
brushes the brain to sleep with the
perfumes of her ease and wakes it In
articulate with the vain grasping for
the dreams she spins within it. And
ever the earth blossoms, and the birds
sing and the great nature turns in its
sleep and wakes to dewy-eyed delight
and man, stirring in his breast but
hampered by the devil of explanation
and analysis that is ever dancing in