Mosses, whereon March in coming treads first, show one hue brighter in the swamps. Pussy willows have made a gray dawn in viny caverns where the day's own dawn looks in but faintly, and the flushing of the red willow betrays reveries of a not impossible cowslip upon the bank beneath. The blue jay has mentioned it in the course of his voluble recollections. He is unwilling to prophesy arbutus, but he will just hint that when the leaves in the wood lot show through snow as early as this.... Once he found a hepatica bud the last day of February.... Speaking with his old friend, the muskrat, last week.... And when you can see red pebbles in the creek at five o'clock in the afternoon.... But it is no use to expect yellow orchids on the west knoll this spring, for some people found them there last year, and after that you might as well.... Of course cowslips beside red willows are remarkably pretty, just as blue jays in a cedar with blue berries.... He is interminable, but then he has seen a great deal of life. And February needs her blue jays' unwearied and conquering faith. THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY _By_ GEORGE SANTAYANA George Santayana was born in Madrid in 1863, of Spanish parentage. He graduated from Harvard in 1886, and taught philosophy there, 1889-1911. He lives now, I think, in England. I must be frank: except his poems, I only know his work in that enthralling volume, _Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana_, edited by L. Pearsall Smith. Much of it is too esoteric for my grasp, but Mr. Smith's redaction brings the fascination of Santayana's philosophy within the compass of what Tennyson called "a second-rate sensitive mind"; and, if mine is a criterion, such will find it of the highest stimulus. This discourse on poetry seems to me one of the most pregnant utterances on the subject. It is not perfectly appreciated by merely one reading; but even if you have to become a poet to enjoy it fully, that will do yourself least harm.