Whenever this green fire is come upon the earth, the swift contagion spreads to the human heart. What the seedlings feel in the trees, what the blood feels in the brown mould, what the sap feels in every creature from the newt in the pool to the nesting bird, so feels the strange remembering ichor that runs its red tides through human hearts and brains. Spring has its subtler magic for us, because of the dim mysteries of unremembering remembrance and of the vague radiances of hope. Something in us sings an ascendant song, and we expect we know not what: something in us sings a decrescent song, and we realise vaguely the stirring of immemorial memories. There is none who will admit that Spring is fairer elsewhere than in his own land. But there are regions where the season is so hauntingly beautiful that it would seem as though Angus Òg knew them for his chosen resting-places in his green journey. Angus Òg, Angus MacGreigne, Angus the Ever Youthful, the Son of the Sun, a fair god he indeed, golden-haired and wonderful as Apollo Chrusokumos. Some say that he is Love: some, that he is Spring: some, even, that in him Thanatos, the Hellenic Celt that was his far-off kin, is reincarnate. But why seek riddles in flowing water? It may well be that Angus Òg is Love, and Spring, and Death. The elemental gods are ever triune: and in the human heart, in whose lost Eden an ancient tree of knowledge grows, wherefrom the mind has not yet gathered more than a few windfalls, it is surely sooth that Death and Love are oftentimes one and the same, and that they love to come to us in the apparel of Spring. Sure, indeed, Angus Òg is a name above all sweet to lovers, for is he not the god--the fair Youth of the Tuatha-de-Danann, the Ancient People, with us still, though for ages seen of us no more--from the meeting of whose lips are born white birds, which fly abroad and nest in lovers' hearts till the moment come when, on the yearning lips of love, their invisible wings shall become kisses again? Then, too, there is the old legend that Angus goes to and fro upon the world, a weaver of rainbows. He follows the Spring, or is its herald. Often his rainbows are seen in the heavens: often in the rapt gaze of love. We have all perceived them in the eyes of children, and some of us have discerned them in the hearts of sorrowful women, and in the dim brains of the old. Ah, for sure, if Angus Og be the lovely Weaver of Hope, he is deathless comrade of the Spring, and we may well pray to him to let his green fire move in our veins; whether he be but the Eternal Youth of the World, or be also Love, whose soul is youth; or even though he be likewise Death himself, Death to whom Love was wedded long, long ago. II