WOODLAND GOLD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

WOODLAND GOLD

By IRIS REEVES, Cleve Road. Grern Bay. via Avondale South, SW3. Auckland. Apea 17 years. (Original.) There's something in the air,. That's new and sweet and rare, A ecent of summer things, A whirr as if of wings. —Nora Perry " Mummy, there's all goldy sunshine in my play-hut!"—or, "Mummy, come and see the little birdie carrying the straw. Isn't.he pretty?." So even the littlest knows these signs—the first signs of spring* A flowering almond stretching slender arms skywards, in the attitude of a lady awakening from a deep sleep;*milk-white cups floating gracefully on a phantom breeze for one breathless moment, then, like little souls that have found their rest, gliding through the air"/to be pierced for one brief moment by a Blanting pencil of sunlight, before coming to rest eventually on a carpet of fresh, green grass. A budding willow with soft, velvety moss cradled round its feet, the sun showering its little, silvery pussies with a soft mellowing light, lending to them the brightness of gold. In the woodlands, too, we find these signs of spring. How green everything seems! How pretty the wildflowers, and how cheeky is that little bright-eyed white-eye which peeps at us inquisitively from under a silver tree fern, then, with a merry wink of his little, beady eyes as if to say, "I'm very busy to-day, spring-cleaning and all that sort of thing," he is gone. How silent everything seems after his going, silence broken only by the silvery murmuring of a little woodland stream loitering for a while round the feet of the ferns, then rippling gently as it bethought it was time it was getting on it-! way. A stray gleam of dancing sunlight pieroes it and turns it with one flickering twist to liquid ' flame. Suddenly the silence is broken by the voice of a tui practising his new spring song. He'repeats the notes over and over again until he is satisfied with the finished effort. As if at a sign, other bird voices sing. Louder and louder they sing, the gusty pines reach down, and, catching the sweet music in their arms, fling it into the blue. Each little songster, one fancies, protests that his new' spring song is best and that the others must stop and listen, but nobody does. By the roadside, too, are to be seen the signs of awakening life. Meeds and grasses even take on a new colour and life as they feel th* tang of spring. All along the roadside, through all the forests and valleys and gardens sweeps the sweet song, tM cradle song which the mothers sing t® their young. The song of new lif® new beauty, new joy. Over a hedge peeps a tree covered in a canop. of pink blossom; and a lovely lady of the roadside! —comes in > view. There she is . . . then, like old-fashioned lady of long ago, " a curtsies and holds a gown of fresh, h i blossom against an azure Bky,