There was a glamour upon it. One knew it was going to grow into one of
those wonderful and shining days in whose enchanted hours any
exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that the Lord God
walked in the garden in the cool of an April day, and that it was a
morning in spring when the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in
the door of his tent.
There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a
heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of
"_April! April!_" that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little
People had heard overnight. In the dark the sleeping souls of the
golden butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now
they were out, "Little flames of God" dancing in the Sunday sunlight.
The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her
fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale
spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful
Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted
sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.
Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays
exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and what had been a blur of
gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and
blossom with amethyst--the wisteria was a-borning. And one knew there
was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was in white, and the
year's new mintage of gold dandelions was being coined in the fresh
grass.
There wasn't a bird that wasn't caroling _April!_ at the top of his
voice from the full of his heart; for wasn't the world alive again,
wasn't it love-time and nest-time, wasn't it Spring?
Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining morning lent a
light that was hope. Without knowing it, they felt themselves a vital
part of the reborn world, sharers in its joy because they were the
children of the common lot, the common people for whom the world is,
and without whom no world could be. Classes, creeds, nations, gods,
all these pass and are gone; God, and the common people, and the
spring remain.
When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell overmuch upon the
sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sorrow, the despair of death. Now
that these three terrible teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a
larger faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the wisdom
of love, and the simple truth that death is just a passing phase of
life. So I sent my workers home that morning rejoicing with the truth,
and was all the happier and hopefuller myself because of it.
Afterwards, when Clélie was giving me my coffee and rolls, the
Butterfly Man came in to breakfast with me, a huge roll of those New
York newspapers which contain what are mistakenly known as Comic
Supplements tucked under his arm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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