The miracle of Spring is beginning.

Leafless, indeed, stand the great woods, and shivering in the cold North wind. The joints of rheumatic oaks creak dismally, and there is a moan in the maples. The skeleton orchards are gray and brown upon the Southern slopes, but the sun is shining and the clock of Time ticks in the heart of May. A January fire rolls and roars up the chimney's capacious throat; the water-pail is nightly glazed with ice, but the birds are abroad and their songs are in all the air. Not a wisp of hay remains in the wide, deep bay of the barn, and the cows decline "to give down," and the lambs are going where the good lambs go, though the lilacs are budding and the willows have fringed the streams with green.

How full of the dear old music of Summer are wood, orchard and field. Even the great empty barn, with its ribs of oak, is a-twitter with swallows that dart in and out at the diamond doors in the gables, and the mud-walled cottages that are built along the rafters. The robins are singing the self-same song they sang a thousand years ago, and the finches are untarnished and golden as ever. Down by the marsh the bobo'-links are ringing their little bells, and swinging to and fro upon the little bushes that sway in the wind. The brown thrushes have built their nests in the fence-corners and the heaps of brush; a Baltimore oriole flickered like a flake of fire through the garden, this morning, and drifted away behind the barn; we frightened up a whip-poor-will yesterday, from among the withered leases, and found a blue-bird's nest with a single egg in a hollow stump in the pasture. A little gray couple are busy building in the cleft of the bar-post, and a small Trojan in speckled jacket is about to keep house on the loaded end of the well-sweep that goes up forty times a day and comes down with a bang. Why didn't the little idiot take up his quarters in the bucket! A fortnight ago, John hung his jacket upon the fence, and to-day he shook out from one of the pockets a nest, and two eggs as blue as the sky.

There is singing everywhere: from the tuft of gray grass there comes a small tune of two notes and a rest, then two more; from the second rail of the fence a gush of melody; from the roof-ridge, a solo; from the depths of the air, as of angel calling unto angel. The birds and the buds make it May, and May it shall be.

Yesterday was Sunday, as clear and as cool as charity, and yesterday I got into good company for once in a way, and went to church in the woods. The gray temple that God built looked dull and empty as I approached, but as I entered, the birds were singing an anthem and Nature had begun to work a miracle.

Last winter we floundered to the January service, and the drifts, how huge they were, and the white arms of the forest were stretched out in silent benediction, stern and cold, like the blessing of old Puritans.

Now, the earth is strewn with withered leaves of a gone summer that rustled articulately beneath the thoughtful foot, and said, as words can never say it: "In the midst of life we are in death," and thus the Sermon began.

And then the birds all around joined in to sing, and the wood-dove to mourn with her mate, and so this passage of Scripture was read out: "The winter is over and gone; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land."

And after that, two sparrows who were blown away last autumn by the keen Northeaster, and that nobody thought to see again, sang a simple song, the burden whereof was, "Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without Him."

A delicate white flower, that had lifted away a counterpane of damp gray leaves, stood up in its place at the foot of a great tree, and what did we have then, but "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. Behold, I show you a mystery! we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

And the little stars of pink and white flowers that were clustered in a constellation about the mossy rock, lifted up their voices and sang, even as they did in Time's morning: "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead." And thus the doctrine was demonstrated, and a robin that minute began to sing.

Then there went noiselessly over the dead leaves as they lay, and over the preachers, and over them that prayed, a small shadow; and, looking up, a white breath of cloud was drifting by, and it said as it went, "Thus passeth human life," and the wind breathed a low sigh, and the service went on.

And all the while the birds were busy as busy could be, carrying timbers and tapestry and couches of down for the homes they were building, and one sang as she wrought, "The better the day," and her mate took it up with "The better the deed," and the Sabbath unbroken shone on.

A few bees, brave as their fellows that dared the dead lion of old Samson's time, went trumpeting along the neighboring fields, a feeble charge against the living lion of the North. Walking along the grand old aisles upon whose floor last summer's dead were lying, let us recall the time before the first snow fell, and the relenting year looked back and smiled, so sad and sweet a smile, even as our dead who stand sometimes upon the holy threshold of a dream; when the last breath of those dead leaves went heavenward like a prayer, and Indian Summer charmed the drowsy earth and golden air. But there is no dying now. The graves are opened! Lo, the violet comes; the lady-slippers dance upon the air while wild Sweet Williams stand admiring by.

Grand sermons preached they all, of faith and hope and beauty yet to be, and as you turned away, there in the field a passage from the Sermon on the Mount, wrapped in green silk, was lying, and what was it but, "Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

So with fragments of sermons and snatches of songs strewn along the way, you leave the temple of the Lord and bear away with you some of the preachers and some of the singers and some of the beauties of the great congregation in that mighty minster. You dismantle a fallen tree of one of Nature's studies, a broad green mat of moss, a piece of velvet from the very loom that wove the glory of morning, and bear it home for Sunday Reading. Perusing it awhile, you wonder you could ever have set foot on such a dainty piece of work, for there, written in God's "fine hand," are maple groves and close-fed pastures for some tiny herd; and little pines like filaments of feathers; and emerald hills full-crowned with woods; and in small valleys, like dimples in a baby's cheek, a mimic lily, as starlight in a tear; the least of Alps with sand-grain cliffs; spears for atomies, tipped with a drop of red; trees a full round inch in height, touched at the top with something like a sunset; a clover-field broad as a linnet's wing, and tufts of shrubs that might hide a hunted gnat from some small sportsman in those mimic fields; a landscape done in little; a picture Nature painted on Holidays and Sundays, and so hid death that, in some fallen tree, lay like a Titan all abroad.

And this bright landscape fair as Eden land, unrolled upon a dinner plate, was served up for Love-of-Beauty's feast, where Fancy sat as guest, and Hope stood by. How earnest Nature is in all she does; how finished, all her work from moss to mountain. The tint on girlhood's lip is well laid on, indeed, but with no greater care than set these rubies in the green fields of Moss-land.

And so that plate of moss "reads like a book." A month ago those pines were not; nay, the small mountain where they grow was not embossed upon the velvet, and here you look upon the programme of what Earth shall be—the finished miracle of Spring; what Earth shall be, despite complaint and evil prophecy.

Take Nature at her word, even as the birds that trust her, and so toil and sing though snows have drifted to the heart of May. Look not abroad for token that the end is near. No telescope shall ever bring to view time's brown October. But when the birds forget to build their summer homes and bless the woods, and roses lose their flush and fragrance; when on just such another scroll of mossy landscape as you are reading now, no promises are made, then know that earnest Nature has wearied of her work and seeks a Holiday at last.