For we have not come here for long debate
Nor taking counsel for our household order,
Howe'er we make a feint of serious things,
For all the world as in affairs of state
A word goes out for war along the border
To further or defeat the loves of kings.
We put our house to rights from year to year;
But that is not the call that brings us here;
We have come here to be glad.

A road runs east and a road runs west
From the table where we sing;

And the lure of the one is a roving quest,
And the lure of the other a lotus dream.
And the eastward road leads into the West
Of the lifelong chase of the vanishing gleam;
And the westward road leads into the East,
Where the spirit from striving is released,
Where the soul like a child in God's arms lies
And forgets the lure of the butterflies.
And west is east, if you follow the trail to the end;
And east is west, if you follow the trail to the end;
And the East and the West in the spring of the world
shall blend.

As a man and a woman that plight
Their troth in the warm spring night.

And the spring for the East is the sap in the heart

of a tree;

And the spring for the West is the will in the wings

of a bird;

But the spring for the East and the West alike shall be

An urge in their bones and an ache in their spirit, a word

That shall knit them in one for Time's foison, once they have heard.

No.t.

So we are somehow sure,

By this dumb turmoil in the soul of man,
Of an impending something. When the stress
Climbs to fruition, we can only guess

What many-seeded harvest we shall scan;
But from one impulse, like a northering sun,
The innumerable outburst is begun,

And in that common sunlight all men know
A common ecstasy

And feel themselves at one.

The comradeship of joy and mystery
Thrills us more vitally as we arouse,
And we shall find our new day intimate
Beyond the guess of any long ago.
Doubting or elate,

With agony or triumph on our brows,
We shall not fail to be

Better comrades than before;

For no new sense puts forth in us but we
Enter our fellows' lives thereby the more.

And three great spirits with the spirit of man
Go forth to do his bidding. One is free,
And one is shackled, and the third, unbound,
Halts yet a little with a broken chain.

Of antique workmanship, not wholly loosed,
That dangles and impedes his forthright way.
Unfettered, swift, hawk-eyed, implacable,
The wonder-worker, Science, with his wand,
Subdues an alien world to man's desires.
And Art with wide imaginative wings
Stands by, alert for flight, to bear his lord
Into the strange heart of that alien world
Till he shall live in it as in himself

And know its longing as he knows his own.
Behind a little, where the shadows fall,
Lingers Religion with deep-brooding eyes,
Serene, impenetrable, transpicuous

As the all-clear and all-mysterious sky,

Biding her time to fuse into one act

Those other twain, man's right hand and his left.

For all the bonds shall be broken and rent in sunder, And the soul of man go free

Forth with those three

Into the lands of wonder;

Like some undaunted youth,

Afield in quest of truth,

Rejoicing in the road he journeys on

As much as in the hope of journey done.

And the road runs east, and the road runs west,
That his vagrant feet explore;

And he knows no haste and he knows no rest,

And every mile has a stranger zest

Than the miles he trod before;

And his heart leaps high in the nascent year,
When he sees the purple buds appear:

For he knows, though the great black frost may blight
The hope of May in a single night,

That the spring, though it shrink back under the bark
But bides its time somewhere in the dark-
Though it comes not now to its blossoming,
By the thrill in his heart he knows the spring;
And the promise it makes perchance too soon,
It shall keep with its roses yet in June;
For the ages fret not over a day,
And the greater to-morrow is on its way.

APRIL*

BY JOHN BURROUGHS

From A Year in the Fields

IF WE represent the winter of our northern climate by a rugged snow-clad mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then the intermediate belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand for spring, with March reaching well up into the region of the * By special permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

snows, and April lapping well down upon the greening fields and unloosened currents, not beyond the limits of winter's sallying storms, but well within the vernal zone - within the reach of the warm breath and subtle, quickening influences of the plain below. At its best, April is the tenderest of tender salads made crisp by ice or snow water. Its type is the first spear of grass. The senses sight, hearing, smell are as hungry for its delicate and almost spiritual tokens as the cattle are for the first bite of its fields. How it touches one and makes him both glad and sad! The voices of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons sweeping across the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of the first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the camp-fire in the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun-how these things and others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two syllables are like the calls of the first birdslike that of the phobe-bird, or the meadow-lark. Its very snows are fertilizing, and are called the poor man's manure.