At each new turning season I ask myself what annual phrase in the great epic of the year most pricks the senses: the stir of sap in the maples, the earliest robin coldly foraging across a bare lawn, crocuses or cowslips or trailing arbutus in the muddy wood-lot, grass appearing along a hundred borders, willow bark suddenly ripe for whistles, garden soil warm and dry enough to risk seed in it, apple blossoms and lilacs lifting the soul like music with their fragrance—the bright, young, green procession from March’s equinox to June’s accomplished solstice; or the higher pomps of summer, red and yellow—berries luxuriant on the hills, wheat in the head, corn haughty with the pride of its stature, meadow-larks that cry continually as cherubim, evenings spangled with fireflies and alive with shrill bats and angry night-hawks and repining frogs, the spare smell of mown hay, keen acrid dust flung through light air by the lean hands of drouth; or golden, purple, imperial autumn—the incredible blue of fringed gentians, apples compliant to hungry hands, grapes dewy and fresh on tingling mornings, gardens bequeathing their wealth to ready cellars, birch fires crackling on a hearth which had nearly forgotten them, leaves so scattered underfoot that every pedestrian sounds like a marching army, wild geese off for the south with eager bugles, a frost transmogrifying the world in a night; or white and black and dusky winter—sounds heard muffled over deadening snow, the gorgeous privacy of long nights, the sweet, bitter coldness of cheeks when the blast strikes them, blood triumphantly warmed by exercise even in zero weather, the crisp flesh of fruit dug from pits hid deep underground, the ringing blades of skates, the malicious whine of sleigh runners, fat companionable snow-birds with an eye on the pantry window, barns warm with the breath of ever-ruminant cows: which is best? Is there any choosing? Should we all vote for the nearest? Perhaps that is what I do when in this season I make my choice for the sundowns of August, which, by some keenness in the winds that then waken, clearly though not too brusquely prophesy, in the midst of a consoling splendour, that the epic has an end: August of the blazing noons, August of the cool nights. * * * * * The most blazing August on the heels of the most pitiless July has no terrors for the man or woman who knows Herrick and can turn from torrid cities to the meadows and brooks and hawthorn-guarded cottages of Herrick’s dainty Devon. He rises for ever with the dawn and summons his perennial Corinna, “sweet Slug-a-bed,” To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and greene; And sweet as Flora.