What?
Give up the rewards of skill? Ah, g'wan!
The girls, even to those who have begun to turn their hair up under,
are turning the rope and dismally chanting: "All in together, pigs
in the meadow, nineteen twenty, leave the rope empty," or whatever
the rune is.
It won't be long now. It won't be long.
"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; the
fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the
tender grape give a good smell. Arise my love, my fair one
and come away."
THE SONG OF SOLOMON.
Out in the woods the leaves that rustled so bravely when we shuffled
our feet through them last fall are sodden and matted. It is warm
in the woods, for the sun strikes down through the bare branches,
and the cold wind is fended off. The fleshy lances of the spring
beauty have stabbed upward through the mulch, and a tiny cup,
delicately veined with pink, hangs its head bashfully. Anemones on
brown wire stems aspire without a leaf, and in moist patches are May
pinks, the trailing arbutus of the grown-ups. As we carry home a
bunch, the heads all lopping every way like the heads of strangled
babies, we can almost hear behind us in the echoing forests a long,
heart-broken moan, as of Rachel mourning for her children, and will
not be comforted because they are not.
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