“forth in the pleasing spring thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love. wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; and every sense, and every heart, is joy.”
what a delicious thing is the first real spring day! a burst into a buttercup-field! what a thing of mad enjoyment for the legs, and eyes, and hands, and mind of the young human animal! what a sweet time to think of, in our sentimental moods, now that we are growing old! and yet, in that time of fresh animal life, there was not reflection enough to allow of deliberate and actual enjoyment of its hilarity and lightness of heart. it welled up bubbling and singing with the gladness of a spring, that yet is glad only because it is glad, and not because it is pure and bright. for it knows not yet of aught that is muddy and foul,44 shallow and stagnant. it knows not of drought, and deadness, and impurity, and dulness, and death. how knows it, therefore, why it ought to be glad? sing on, sweet stream, but you must be left to learn, as you roll seawards, into a sober old river, why you used to sing as a bright untroubled stream.
so, i suppose, except for the impetus and rush of early life, in its spring days, before it has been checked here, and wasted there, and hemmed in, and spread out, and turned away, and thwarted, until its rush, and song, and glee have settled into a quiet, useful soberness, or into a foul stagnant pool that cannot often bear to call to mind those old pure, careless days—except for that first impetus and rush, i suppose it is more an absence of something than a presence of aught, that makes the child’s heart so glad. anxious thought for soul and body of self and others; disappointment, regret, estrangements, remorse, satiety, failing powers; none of these check the young limbs, and the young lungs, and the young heart, as a sight of the brimming spring meadow bursts upon the enchanted young eyes, and there is a shout, and a scamper, and a bound; and lo! the little naked legs are deep in green grass, and yellow bobbing buttercups, and starry radiant daisies.
i can’t feel towards the buttercups and daisies exactly as i did in those very early days. it is indeed a very primitive state of things, when these are as gold and silver coins to the young eager grasping hand, that would yet hold more when already by twos, and ones, and threes, the white discs and yellow cups struggle out of the little space that the finger and thumb cannot quite close in. you very soon get to slight these humble flowers; and, losing your easy content, aim45 higher, even at cowslips, primroses, and here and there an early purple orchis. that is, perhaps, the most simple-hearted and easily-contented time of life, which asks no more for its riches than both hands full of buttercups and daisies, guineas and shillings bright and fresh coined from the mint of spring.
i remember well a wide meadow shut in with tall hedges, in which, for a spring or two, while we were young enough to enjoy them, there was, for my two sisters and myself, a very scramble of such coins. out on some mild april day, when the sun shone brightly, and the air was a growing air, and the paths dry. out with our governess, we three, for a walk. a fortnight of soft april showers, or warm damp days, keeping us within the garden while the field was being dressed, had46 prepared for us a surprise. we ran our hoops along the dry paths, until the winner of the race caught sight of that fair meadow. through the white wicket-gate then, the hoop thrown aside into the yielding grass, and the three pairs of little hands were busy enough soon. at first, the aim was merely to pick what came to hand, and quantity, not quality, was in demand. but, so soon do we begin to undervalue that which is abundant for that which is less easily attained, in a little while we were busy after rarities; mere white daisies were passed over, and those with a “crimson head” were sought; also, i remember, those with a scarlet jewel in the centre of the boss of gold. cowslips were rare in the fields about us; were anyhow rare at that early time of year. fancy then our exultation, if we should come upon a pale bent head, the delicate trembling spotted yellow, curving upwards towards the sheath of faint green. the bound towards it; the excitement of feeling the juicy crisp stalk break, and then rushing away with the treasure! i remember such a find now, though i be far on in life beyond that early stage marked by that slight drooping flower.
but of course the daisies and buttercups, even before “whole summer fields were theirs by right,” soon lost their fascination, even in those early simplest days, before the advance of other rarer flowers. we could pass the meadow soon, without bounding into it, on our way round the park wall on a violet expedition. we could scent these out, and would eagerly part the crowding leaves and the binding ivy-nets that hid them. not much fear lest we should gather enough of them to risk dropping any from an over-filled hand.47 still, we mostly went home well content, with a close-clipped neat dark-blue bunch in one hand, with here and there a pure white prize, or a large one merely purple tinged, gleaming out of the dark. these white- and purple-tinged violets, you must know, had become our prizes, being rare, found seldom indeed by the park wall, but oftener on some mighty sandhills, that towered above the road a little way beyond our daisy-field, and seemed to bury the deep-lying road, with its winding carriages and pigmy passengers.
out for a long walk now, even to that deep chalk-pit, where not one cowslip hung, rare, unique, precious, but hundreds, nay thousands, bent their pale yellow heads, and scented the air with their sweet faint breath. so juicily they snapped, without that drawback which i deplore in primroses—the long sinew that a hasty picking leaves behind, to the marring of the flower. baskets we had, trowels in them, to collect some roots for the misused pieces of ground known as our gardens: and woe betide an early orchis, if we came across it. nearly always, after a long and patient digging, when the final pull came, a long blanched stalk, with no root at the end, would meet our disappointed eyes.
but of course the great thing was to collect unlimited flowers. and really, if you turned me loose into the bank of england, into that room in which those aggravating fellows shovel about the gold in coal-scuttle scoops, and bade me gather my fill, i am sure the delight would be neither so fresh, so sweet, nor so wholesome, as that entering unchecked upon the rich cowslip-wealth, trembling all over the short turf of the sloping side of the chalk-pit which ended our expedition.48 two principal objects had we in collecting these flowers—for as the year goes on, even children seek use as well as beauty in their gettings; first to make cowslip balls, many and large, when we got home; next, to make cowslip tea. there is, or was, a keen delight in the former of these pursuits. the excitement and delight of the first cowslip ball made is feverish and unsettling. the long, tight string upon which are hung the poor flowers with their tails pinched off; the filling that string, the tying it, with here and there a cowslip tumbling out; and then the playing with the sweet-scented soft toy, till the room is littered with its scattered wealth, these are things to remember even now. but, no doubt, the great thing was the cowslip tea—allowed to us that night instead of milk-and-water; and to be drunk in real teacups instead of mugs. the solemn shredding the yellow crown out of its green calyx; seated, all three, at our little low table with the deep rim; the growing heap of prepared flowers; then the piling them into the teapot, the excitement of seeing the boiling water poured upon them; the grave momentous pause while the tea was brewing; and the hearty, but really at last abortive, endeavour to persuade ourselves and each other that we liked the filthy concoction, and found it really a treat. ah, life has many a cup of cowslip tea in it; delightful in the preparation, exciting in the anticipation, but most disappointing when it comes to the actual partaking!
we must not stop now to run down that green path into the wood—our one wood, nor to see which shall first enter it with a bound; we must not stop, although we know that a little later in the year there were some rare choice treasures49 there. a firmament of starry wood anemones; and here and there a bent spike of wild hyacinth, not yet ripened into its deep full blue; and here and there a pale green orchis, coming out of its two ribbed leaves, valued because rarer than its purple brother, that but rarely yet towered with its tall rich spike above the clustering milky flowers. and on one bank that we knew, just two or three roots of primroses, the only roots that grew wild for miles about that part, each tendering to us its crowded offering of sweet faint flowers, and deeper yellow buds imbedded in the crisp, crumpled leaves. and then the lords and ladies: lord, handsomest—lady, rarest: i could pick and unroll them now. they call to mind a glad, bright little address of a child to the flowers, with which i will conclude these reminiscent wanderings among the old wildflower fields of youth:—
“oh velvet bee, you’re a dusty fellow, you’ve powdered your legs with gold! oh brave marsh marybuds, rich and yellow, give me your money to hold! oh columbine, open your folded wrapper, where two twin turtle-doves dwell! oh cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper that hangs in your clear green bell!”
why have i recalled these child remembrances of early spring days? why, but to add that those keen delights, those exquisite, though unintellectual and reasonless, appreciations are gone—in this life for ever! wherefore i say in this life, i mean presently to show: suffice it now to say that the summer and autumn of human life, dry and dusty, or sorrowful and decaying, have done quite, except for some50 tender sweet reminiscent hints, with the freshness, and the glee, and the gladness of the old spring days.
“there was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, the earth, and every common sight, to me did seem, apparelled in celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream. it is not now as it hath been of yore;— turn wheresoe’er i may, by night or day, the things which i have seen i now can see no more.”
these lines of wordsworth express, very exquisitely, the thought at which i have just been catching. something goes, as we grow old—a gladness, a suddenness of appreciation of enjoyment is lost; and the dark summer foliage is not the same with the fresh light green of the young spring leaves. and when a gush of the old keen relish comes back for a moment, there is regret as well as sweetness in the tears that suddenly dim the eyes.
spring days, sweet spring days, my quiet heart and rested eye tell me that there is no fear but that i enjoy you still!
“for, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
this exquisite poetry has its voice of delight for me, and as i shut my eyes, it brings a change over the bare boughs and the winter land. i dream of the chill black hedges and trees, flushing first into redness, and then “a million emeralds burst51 from the ruby buds.” i dream of the birds coming back, one after one, until the poetry of the flowers is all set to music. and i go out into the land to behold, not only to dream of and image, these things. i watch for the delicious green, tasselling the earliest larch (there is one every year a fortnight in advance of the others) in the clump of those trees beside the road on my way home. i look, in a warm patch that i know, for the first primroses, and when i find them mildly and quietly gazing up at me from the moss, and ivy, and broken sticks, and dead leaves, a surprise, although i was expecting them, and a dim reflection of that old child-joy, bring with a rush to my heart again those “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” and in the garden i wander through the bare shrubberies, varied with bright green box, and gather in my harvest there. the little queen elizabeth aconites, gold-crowned in their wide-frilled green collars; these are no more scant, and just breaking with bent head through cracking frosty ground. they have carpeted the brown beds, and are even waxing old and past now. the snowdrops have but left a straggler here and there; and the miniature golden volcano of the crocus has spent its columns of fire. the hazels are draped with slender, drooping catkins; the sweetbriar is letting the soft sweet-breathed leaves here and there out of the clenched hand of the bud. the cherry-tree is preparing to dress itself almost in angels’ clothing, white and glistening, and delicious with all soft recesses of clear grey shadow, seen against the mild blue sky. the long branches of the horse-chestnut trees, laid low upon the lawn, are lighting up all over with the ravishing crumpled emerald that bursts52 like light out of the brown sticky bud—-as sometimes holy heavenly thoughts may come from one whose first look we disliked; or as god’s dear lessons unfold out of the dark sheath of trouble. the fairy almond-tree—of so tender a hue that you might fantastically imagine it a cherry-tree blushing—casts a light scarf over a dark corner of the shrubbery. the laburnum is preparing for the summer, and is all hung with tiny green festoons. against the blue sky, on a bare sycamore branch, that stretches out straight from the trunk, a glad-voiced thrush seems thanking god that the spring days are come. wedged tight into three branching boughs, near the stem of a box-tree, i find a warm secure nest, filled with five little blue-green eggs. it is still a delight to me to find a nest; a delight, if not now a rapture, an intoxication.
all these i see on one spring day or another, as i walk into my garden, or out into the changing lanes. all these i see, and all these i love. but i see them, and i love them tenderly and quietly, not with the wonder and the glee of life’s early spring days. i am sad, partly because i know that a great deal of that old wondering ecstatic thrill has gone.
“the rainbow comes and goes, and lovely is the rose, the moon doth with delight look round her when the heavens are bare; waters on a starry night are beautiful and fair; the sunshine is a glorious birth; but yet i know, where’er i go, that there hath passed away a glory from the earth.”
it must be so, naturally, if only from the mere fact that53 things must lose their newness, and so their wonder, to the eye and the heart. do what you will, you must become accustomed to things. and the scent of a hyacinth or of the may, will cease when familiar to be the wonderful enchanting thing that childhood held it to be. and the thirtieth time that we see, to notice, the first snowdrop bursting through the pale green sheath above the brown bed, is a different thing from the third time. we appreciate delights keenly when we are young, seek the same in later years, but never find them; and then all our life remember the search more or less regretfully. so wordsworth, the old man, addresses the cuckoo that brought back his young days and his young thoughts by its magic voice:—
“thou bringest unto me a tale of visionary hours.
“thrice welcome, darling of the spring! even yet thou art to me no bird, but an invisible thing, a voice, a mystery:
“to seek thee did i often rove through woods and on the green; and thou wert still a hope, a love; still longed for, never seen.
“and i can listen to thee yet; can lie upon the plain and listen, till i do beget that golden time again.”
ah well, i must get on to my moral. i must not wail like an autumn wind among the young flowers, and the bright leaves, and the blithe songs of the sweet spring days, else i54 shall lay myself open to the reproach of the poet describing one who—
“words of little weight let fall, the fancy of the lower mind— that waxing life must needs leave all its best behind.”
it is not true really, that we are leaving behind our best, when we have passed into the summer, or even into the autumn days. but there is a degree, a portion of truth in it. there is a sense, no doubt, in which even the summer does lose a beauty which is the peculiar possession of life’s spring days.
first then (to divide sermon-wise), what is that we lose, when we lose spring days? i have hinted at this loss in nearly all that has been written above. we lose the gladness of inexperience, the gladness and enjoyment that is not thoughtful, nor such as can give a reason for itself, but that is merely natural, and welling up irresistibly like a spring. we lose the newness of things—aye, more, far more than this, we lose the newness of ourselves, the freshness of our own heart. this is (with some in a greater, with some in a less degree) what we discover that we have left behind, when we look back on life’s spring days. some of us, with a tender half-regretful watering, keep a hint, a reminiscence, of that old freshness. but many heedlessly suffer the world’s dust to coat it over, and the world’s drought to shrivel it up.
but now, what may we have gained, if there be something lost in our leaving spring days behind? if we lose a little, let us not fear but that our gain is far larger than our loss. we55 gain gladness and we gain sadness (i use the word gain advisedly)—the gladness and the sadness of experience. a gladness that is part of the depth of a grave river now; profound, if not light-hearted like the little spring. a gladness that, when it comes, is more rational than merely animal; that has a reason to give for itself, and does not exist merely because it exists. a joy that is far more rare, also less ecstatic, but that is higher and deeper, having its birth in the intellect, and not simply in the life of the human creature.
to exemplify my meaning. in art, compare the mere admiration without knowledge, with the intelligent appreciation. turned loose without knowledge into a picture-gallery, how many things you admire, almost everything; and how fresh and uncritical is your admiration! but gain knowledge of art, gain experience; and you straightway lose in quantity what you yet gain in quality. you admire fewer pictures, but your admiration of the few is a different thing from that old admiration of the many. it is a higher thing, more intelligent, more subtle, more refined. it is an appreciation now, not merely an ignorant admiration. you are harder to please; in one sense you have lost; but manifestly, on the whole you have gained.
and so with the gladness of manhood. it is a deeper, graver, more fastidious, yet a more reasonable and higher feeling than the gladness of the child. the sparkle, and bubble, and glitter, and singing have gone; but in their stead is a strength, an earnestness, an undercurrent not easily stayed or stemmed or turned aside. the gladness which is intelligent is better than the gladness which is instinctive.
56 and the sadness of experience (for we cannot live long in this world without discovering that life is exquisitely sad)—the sadness which comes with experience—is this also a gain? no doubt it is—no doubt it is. a wise man once told us that sorrow is better than laughter; that the house of mourning is better than the house of feasting. and a greater than solomon endorsed with his lips and with his life the declaration, “blessed are they that mourn.”
and who that regards life in its true aspect, but must bow a grave assent to this verdict? he who watches the effect on himself of god’s teaching, and of the lessons which he sets to be learnt, will understand what the master means by his saying. he who regards his own life as something more than a bee’s life, or a butterfly’s life; he who sees that the life of man has its schooling, meant to raise it above our natural meannesses, and petulances, and impulses, and weaknesses, and selfishnesses, and ungenerousness—into something high and noble and stedfast, exalted, sublime, angelic, godlike; he who thus thinks of life, and watches life with this idea ever in view,—will find it not hard in time to thank god for having made him sad, even while the sadness is fresh and new and keen in his subdued and wounded heart. disappointed in many things, and with many people, he will accept the disappointment with a quiet, anguished, thankful heart, feeling that god, who tore from him his prop, is raising the trailing vine from the ground, and instructing its tendrils to twine around himself, the only support that can never fail them. and this is well, he knows, who is a watcher of life, and a learner of its lessons.
57 and when sadness has produced this, its right and intended effect of sweetening, and not souring the soul, a fresh advantage and gain steals, starlike, into the darkened sky. the heart that has been made lonely, except for god’s then most nearly felt presence, in a sorrow, is that which is the most braced and disentangled for the great and noble deeds of life. with a sad and a disappointed, if yet still a loving, tender heart, we can go out on god’s work, go out to face evil, or to do good, more easily and thoroughly oftentimes, than when this great grave, the world, shows to us “its sunny side.” sadness, to him who humbly and prayerfully is seeking to learn god’s lesson in life, has not a weakening, but a tonic power. god, who sends the sadness, sends also the health and the strength; yea, the strength arises from the sadness. something of what i mean is grandly expressed in the following extract:—
“there are moments when we seem to tread above this earth, superior to its allurements, able to do without its kindness, firmly bracing ourselves to do our work as he did his. those moments are not the sunshine of life. they did not come when the world would have said that all around you was glad; but it was when outward trials had shaken the soul to its very centre, then there came from him ... grace to help in time of need.”
sadness, then, which braces and strengthens the character, which raises it into something nobler than it would otherwise have been; which sets a man free and stirs him up for great and noble acts, for a resolute devoted doing of christ’s work on earth—such an experience is certainly a gain; and if this be our own, even when the autumn woods are growing58 bare, we are not to wish to have back the old sweet spring days.
now one more loss and gain has occurred to my mind, contemplating those spring days that seem, but are not, so far behind me in life. how often we pine after the innocence of childhood! how the poetry of our hearts, and of our writers, loves mournfully to recur to this!
“the smell of violets, hidden in the green, poured back into my empty soul and frame the times when i remember to have been joyful, and free from blame.”
but here again a little thought will show us that we need not have left our best behind, when the spring days are with us no more. deliberate and intelligent goodness and holiness is a better thing than mere innocence of childhood, which, again, is rather the absence of something than the presence of aught. there has been merely neither time nor opportunity yet for much evil doing: there was no intelligent choice of good because of its goodness. and thus, if the man (although he have sinned far more than the child can have done) has yet, at last, and through much sharp experience, learnt life’s great lesson, and has become (however it be but incipiently) holy and good, that deliberate and positive, though imperfect goodness, is far better than the mere negative innocence of the child. angelic innocence is, and the innocence of adam would have been, no doubt, intelligent innocence. but now that we have fallen, that innocence (which, after all, is but comparative) of childhood is little else but the lack of time and knowledge and opportunity for sin. such innocence is59 merely a negative thing, while holiness is positive. and he who is ripening into holiness in life’s summer, need not regret the mere innocence of its spring days. in life’s filled, and alas, blotted pages, if, amid many smears and stains, the golden letters of goodness at last begin to gleam forth in a clear predominance, he who considers wisely will not regret much the newness of the book, whose pages are only white and pure, because scarce yet written in at all.
* * * * *
“the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” all is evanescent, passing away; not only the objects that we desire, but even our desire and appreciation of them too. nor does this only apply to that which is worldly, in an evil sense, but to some objects sad to lose, but which to have still, but no longer to be able to appreciate, is yet a sadder but an inevitable loss. when we look back upon life’s spring days, something really sweet, and beautiful, and desirable, seems left behind and gone. not life’s best; not the grape, but the bloom on it; not the deep blue day, but the strange glory of the morning sky. something seems lost. i am fond of maintaining that it will yet hereafter be found. in heaven, i think, there will be not only beauty, fairer than our fairest spring days; but an appreciative power, undying, ever existing; and hearts that shall not know what it is to be growing old. this life is one, i again toll, of incessant passing away. friends and joys leave us, and even if they did not, the power of enjoying often goes, and hands that were once little close-locked hands, deteriorate into flabby, cold fishes’ fins.
60 here, you must lose, if you would gain; you must spend if you would buy. hereafter it may be different. a hint of this seems given in an old prophecy of choice things to be had without money, and without price. ’tis all clear profit there, i conclude; you add, without subtracting.
yes, in that land (to illustrate by a fancy) the winter flowers will come, one after one, breaking through the frost-bound beds, and when the time comes at which we shall expect them to go, they will surprise us by staying with us still. the sweet, faint, mild spring primroses will brim the copses, and spill over, trickling down the banks; the daffodils (not lent-lilies there) will dance over the meadows in a golden sheet, and will wonder to find that they are additions, not substitutes. the trembling cowslips, the starry anemones, the wood-fulls of hyacinths, the rose campions, the purple orchis spires, these will supplement, not supplant, the fair growth that used to fade at the first footfall of their advent. and so the sweetbriar roses, red and burning, and their paler sisters with unscented leaves, and the clematis snow, and the honeysuckle clusters, and the meadow-sweet; these will come not to fill an empty cup, but a full one, and one that yet, though full, is ever capable of containing more. and so snowdrops need not die for violets to come, nor violets vanish to make room for the rose. and autumn will not supersede summer, nor come, except to add its quota of beauty. “how then?” ask you, “shall we not soon arrive at the end of the delights of the year, and weary with their sameness?” no, i reply, for i think we shall not stop at summer in heaven, but ever go on into new and lovelier seasons;61 appreciating old pleasures with unweary hearts, but ever adding to them new.
“old things are passed away.” that is, perhaps, this old fading state of things, of objects, and capacity of enjoying them: and our hearts that once were young, but that still (except for the youth and freshness that religion can preserve in them) will be ever growing so old—so old.
“behold i make all things new.” all things—our hearts then, too: they will be again fresh, and that old forgotten or sorrowfully remembered child wonder, and appreciation, and love may come back; and the “forgets” of our later years be called to mind again:—
“is it warm in that green valley, vale of childhood, where you dwell? is it calm in that green valley round whose bournes such great hills swell? are there giants in the valley,— giants leaving footprints yet? are there angels in the valley? tell me——i forget.”
but nothing that is beautiful to remember will be forgotten there. and the poet will no more lament a light gone out, a glory faded; our worn-out feelings, and spirits, and appreciations, and hopes, and beliefs, and wonders, and admirations, will be restored to us new. so altogether new, so quite different in nature, as well as in degree, from the old, that they will keep new, and not fade and perish in the using. that world will not pass away, nor the enjoyment thereof. for all there will be in perfect harmony with the will of god, which abideth for ever.
62 everlasting spring days! think of that! i mean an everlasting spring season and freshness in the heart. oh the sadness which is an undercurrent of all earth’s poetry, from the nightingale’s, upward, will have left our songs then!
“we look before and after, and pine for what is not; our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught; our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”
but this will then and there be no longer the case, for life will no longer be “a thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.” season after season, joy after joy, will indeed dance into light, but will not, after a little brief while of enjoyment, die into the shade. heaven’s everlasting flowers will not grow dry, and dusty, and colourless; but for ever retain and increase the freshness, and the abundance, and the light, and the exquisite glory of those unimagined spring days.
