Prologue to—Spring!

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 18

Prologue to —Spring!

Everybody,—

Spring is in the air already—and isn't it exciting. Yesterday a sparrow from the next-door lilac tree added his noisy dialler lo' the piping of the blackbird, who had been broadcasting the good news from the facade across my window for days past. L don’t know why the black-bird should glimpse the spring before the sparrow, unless', it is that his habit of airing himself from chimney tops, wirlcss masts and- minarets gives him a superior view of the.world than that which the little fellow gets on the lower branches of the lilac. In the garden the news is coming up from below, bonw by those unfailing outriders of the spring, the snowdrop and the crocus. A. modest company; but in their silken pennons is the assurance of the many-coloured pageant which will crowd upon their heels. Scattered patches of broom arc etched against the blue dome of the sky and powdered along the hilltops. The grass is dappled by a hundred shadows —thrown carelessly by a regiment of pussy-willows. The faint gold of their pollen’d branches is repeated in the pale glimmer of the simshine —but soon, very soon, it icill be caught up and flaunted triumphantly by the daffodils. Already a small group are shaking out their peaked bonnets and beckoning to reluctant neighbours to discard the dull wrappings of winter. And sometimes a cool icind rustles down from the hills and makes them dance in lyric loveliness beneath the trees.

Toren and country is teeming with signs of spring, so keep your eyes- and ears open, my Leaguers!