THE MIRACLE OF SPRING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17889, 17 September 1921, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MIRACLE OF SPRING.

BY ItAIANOA.

A REVELATION OF RICHES.

The stupendous miracle of spring, which once a year fills our hearts with gladness and awe, is happening all about us in these bright days. A miracle it is, more mysterious than any you could see at Lourdes, and more mighty. Batana's influence is but a tiny speck of negligible dust to this triumph of returning vigour that a winterworn world knows.

"iou shall see it come to pass before your open eyes hi your own little garden, if you bo a gardener of any worth at all. The undevout gardener is mad. As the wonder grows before your gaze you shall feel anew the truth of Kipling's word : That half a proper gaxdvaoi's work is done upon, his knees. But outside that space fenced off from the wild the same miracle of reassertive life spreads afar. In the deep shadows of the sheltered valley a.nd upon the upland slopes, by the quiet waters of the hiding stream and where the wind's great diapason shakes the forest tree-tops, in the watered hollows of the marshes 'and upon the arid ridges where foothold is precarious for ail but the tiniest children of life, the same great renewal happens. The Vernal Victory. A little while ago, not more than a handful of days at most, there was no notable sign of this. There were bald domes and wrinkled features and inert limbs throughout all nature. The tide of life had ebbed fax from the sight of man, and seemed fated 4 to find a final burial in the caverns where death lurked. All seemed old and moribund. -Now all is changed. Up from the ground wo have so unthinkingly trodden, out from the brittle twig that looked so dead, along tho bough where the turbulent wind tore its wonted path unchallenged, across the spreading slopes that boasted but a threadbare and dwindling' garb, the resurgent life appears and triumphs. Blade and blossom have burst their prison. The silence of sleep is broken, and the whispered promise of arising powers grows apace into a laughing triumph. It is as if the children whom the pied piper oi winter had lured away to hidden captivity had suddenly escaped and come back in dancing glee to gladden all Hamelin's homes again. There is a gay measure in the music of the air, a glowing glory in the garment of the earth, a new and holier gleam upon the sea.

This vernal victory of life asserts the power and wealth with which our earth is endowed. No pauper, orphaned and mendicant, is the world in which "we live. It is " rich beyond the dreams of avarice," and it has sources of ever-renewing youth. In its hand is the philosopher's stone that can turn all to desired gold. In its keeping is the secret of perpetual motion. Its reclothing with a vernal glory and the multiplying of its flocks and herds are signs of an heirship in its own right to untold goods. It bears a chalice wherefront the wine of life ever and anon overflows, however deep the draughts that sometimes seem to drain it. Its riches, despite the assaults on that churlish man makes at times upon its open purse, are inexhaustible. ... -\tv

Earth's Good Things. These are days in which we may readily share Stevenson's " Happy Thought," understood by all with the child heart— The world is so full of a number of things. I'm sttro we should all be as* happy a* kings. In the spring we tread gaily the open road with Borrow, and /find in day and night, and the wind on the heath, good things. The caresses and consolations of this season, that meant so much to Earner, ton, come softly and soothingly to us. We sit with Wordsworth, as he sings: Beneath these fruit-tree boughs, that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head. With sweetest sunshine round roe spread, Of Spring's unclouded weather; In this sequestr/d nook, how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat, And flowers and birds once more to greet. My last year's friends together. Gissing may take us out with his alter ego, Henry Ryecroft, and talk to us again of the springs he remembered I recall my moments of deMght, the recognition of each flower that urfolded, the surprise of budding branches, clothed in a night with green. The first snowy gleam upon the blackthorn did not escape me. By its familiar bank, I watched lor the earliest primrose, and in its copsj* I found the anemone. Meadows shining with buttercups, hollows sunned with, the march marigold, held me long at gaze. 1 saw the sallow, glistening with its cones of silvery fur, and splendid with dust of gold. These common things touch me with, more of admiration and of wonder each time I behold them.

With these and other " companions of the spring," we may share the hopes that earth's renewal in vigour and beauty awakens, and claim for our own at least a little of the wealth it bestows in largesse.

The Art of Appreciation. The pity of it is that, with what Whitman calls our " mania of owning things," we have acquired the habit of esteeming lightly things got for nothing and enjoying only things that actually and exclusively belong to us. It is not enough to admire a flower as it grows; we must pluck it and wear it or else give it a sort of pensioner's protection in a vase. Our own beautiful gardens are often unnecessarily shut in from the seeking eyes of passers-by. We have so wrapped up the idea of legal possession along with the enjoyment of earthly things that the wonderful things all about us make unheeded appeal. We have commercialised our joys. It is better to us to own exclusively somo fine painting than to share with others its glory in an art gallery. We have, with the progress of the centuries, paid dearly in this way for the acquirement of individual titles to property. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours. But who really possesses the painting that hangs upon the wall? Is it he who has paid so mai.y pounds for it mereiy | that lie may have the pride of pointing it out to others as his own, or the visitor who looks ujiou it with deep understanding and appreciation So, with the glories of the earth as they are revealed to us in the brightness and the ' power of these spring days, we may hold I some of them by legal title in our ; gardens and fields, and yet have no effec- | live posssssiou of them. These belong really only to those who tan enjoy them. The abounding wealth of which the recurrent spring gives witness has been made the subject of human marketings and even the means of man's inhumanity to man. But there remains for us all the enjoyment of the wonders in earth and sky that the season of renewal : brings. No man can pluck these out of our hands, albeit* we may ourselves foolishly let them slip. It were well ' that, we the experience of [ Smetham, Buskin's friend, and " learned I the art of appieciation." Its gifts are I incapable of summing in money's millions, I and give their real value to all things in ijheaven and earth*