In now out of grey mist grew My own sweet violet, shy and blue,
With eyes of smiling sunshine
And tears of diamond dew.
The Prince of Winter sat on the mountains and gazed upon the valley.
 
He knew that Spring must soon be here and anxiously looked out for him. But there was nothing to see but snow and snow and yet more snow; and he began to think that young Spring was afraid.
 
He laughed scornfully and sent his howling round the mountain-peaks. Wildly they rushed over the hills, snapped great trees in the wood and broke the ice on the river to pieces. They drove the floes before them, flung them over the meadows and whipped the water into .
 
“There, there!” said Winter. “Softly, my children, softly!”
 
He bade them go down again; and, , they crept round behind the mountains.
 
When night came and the stars twinkled, Winter stared at the river with his cold eyes; and there and then there was ice again upon the water. But the[27] waves broke it into two at once. They leapt and danced and cracked the thin crust each time that it formed over them.
 
“What’s this?” asked Winter, in surprise.
 
At that moment, a soft song sounded far down in the valley:
 
Play up! Play soon!
Keep time! Keep !
Ye wavelets, blue and tender!
Winter clutched his great beard and leant forward to listen. Now the song sounded again and louder:
 
Play up! Play soon!
Keep time! Keep tune!
Ye wavelets, blue and tender!
Keep tune! Keep time!
Burst ice and
In equinoctial splendour!
Up sprang Winter and stared, with his hand over his brows.
 
Down below in the valley stood the Prince of Spring, young and straight, in his green , with the over his shoulder. His long hair flowed in the wind, his face was soft and round, his mouth was ever smiling, his eyes were dreamy and moist.
 
“You come too soon!” shouted Winter.
 
But Spring bowed low and replied:
 
“I come by our appointment.”
 
“You come too soon!” shouted Winter again. “I am not nearly done. I have a thousand bags full of snow and my gales are just as strong and biting as they were in January.”
 
“That is your affair, not mine,” said Spring, calmly. “Your time is past now, and my sway is beginning. Withdraw in peace to your mountains.”
 
Then Winter folded his strong, hairy hands and looked anxiously at Spring:
 
“Give me a short !” he said. “I you to grant me a little delay. Give me a month, a week; give me just three poor days.”
 
Spring did not answer, but looked out over the valley, as though he had not heard, and loosened the green silk ribbon by which he carried his lute.
 
But the Prince of Winter stamped on the mountains till they shook and his fists in anger:
 
“Go back to whence you came,” he said, “or I shall turn my snows over you and bury you so deep that you will never find your way out of the valley. I shall let loose my storms till your wretched strains are drowned in their roaring. Your song shall freeze in your throat. Wherever you walk or stand, I shall follow your tracks. Whatever you call by day I shall by night.”
 
Spring raised his head and strode through the valley. He plucked harder at the of his lute and every tree in the forest forward to listen. The earth sighed under the snow, the waves of the river stood still and heard and then joined in the song, as they leapt towards the sea. Winter himself swallowed his anger for a moment and listened to Spring’s song:
 
In vain thy prayer would , in vain thy menace frighten;
Behind the blackest cloud-wrack, the sunbeams laugh and lighten.
It rang through the valley in long, loud, solemn tones; and Echo answered from every hill and mountain.
 
But Winter shook his clenched fists to the sky and shouted aloud:
 
“Out, all my mighty storms! Out with you, out! Burst down upon the valley and shatter and destroy all this! Rush over the hills and snap every tree in the forest! Overturn the mountains, if you can, and crush yonder green beneath them!”
 
Out rushed the storm; and the snow came. It was awful weather. The trees creaked and crashed and fell, the river its banks, the foam of the waves right up to the sky, great of snow poured down the mountain-slope.
 
[33]But Spring went his way through the valley and sang, in ever fuller and stronger tones:
 
Let all thy loud winds , let all thy tempest ;
Let all thy white, bright snow-birds loose, across the meadow flying!
my foot is on the bridge and all the ice-flowers dying!
Thou knowest thy power in the vale has met its conquering fellow.
“Better than that!” shouted Winter. “Roar, storm; whirl, snow; , rain; beat, hail!”
 
And the storm roared louder; and the snow whirled down. It grew as dark as though the sun, the moon and all the stars had been put out. Great blocks of stone rolled down over the valley; the mountains shook and split. It was as though the end of the world had come.
 
But high through the murk shone Spring’s green garb; and louder than storm and thunder rang his song. Earth and air and water sang with him: the poorest blade of grass beneath the snow, the crow in the wood, the worm in the mould, each of them joined in the song according to its power. Even the trees that fell in the forest under the onslaught of the storm confessed Spring in the hour of their death:
 
Thou knowest it were best to yield to save thy might from falling;
Thou knowest I am come to drape the porch of Summer’s palace.
[35]
Thy victims, on the hills and murdered in the valleys,
Awake to life, to happy life, at my soft song’s recalling.
Then Winter gave in.
 
The storm flew north over the mountains with a howl; and it stopped snowing. The river returned to its bed. Now and again there was a crash in the forest, when a branch that had been struck by lightning fell to the ground. Otherwise all was still.
 
And then it began to .
 
The snow had often sparkled in the sun and rejoiced, but that was a different sun from the one that now stared down upon it. The sun now riding in the skydisliked the snow and the snow disliked the sun.
 
“What on earth do you want here?” asked the sun and stared with ever-increasing curiosity.
 
And the snow felt quite awkward and wished itself miles away. It melted up above till great holes came; and it melted down below till it suddenly and turned to nothing, more or less. Everywhere it, the water ran in rills: through the wood, down the hillside, over the meadow, out in the river, which carried it patiently to the sea. Everywhere stood of water, large and small; they soaked slowly into the ground, as its frozen crust disappeared by degrees. But sometimes they had to wait, for the ground was hard put to it to drink so much at a time.
 
And, while it , harder and harder, and the coat of snow grew thinner every day, Spring stood on the edge of the wood and bowed to the earth and sang:
 
My little snowdrop, gentle sprite,
Thy heart was ever brave and bright.
Not once it , pierced with fright,
At Winter’s white bleeding.
Under Spring’s song, a hundred snowdrops burst from the ground and shone forth white and green. They nodded their heavy heads; and Spring nodded to them. But then he went on, till he stopped again, farther away, and sang:
 
And quick, each tiny crocus, too,
Put on your frocks of daintiest ,
Frocks yellow, white and dusky-blue,
In full first clusters leading!
The crocuses at once opened their flowers and , short as they were, for they were ever so proud of being among the first. But, while they were still out, already Spring was in a fresh place and sang:
 
Climb, whitlow-grass, thy willow-mast!
O where art thou? Yet sleeping fast?
Thou wast not to enter last:
Up, lower plants preceding!
And all the willow-branches were filled forthwith with the yellow flowers of the whitlow-grass, which nodded gladly to the crocuses and snowdrops. And Spring sang again:
 
Dear fresh spurge-laurel, briskly grow!
Thou, whose keen lance with glow
Would burst the lap of the cold snow,
Come forth: obey my pleading!
There stood the spurge-laurel, like a bright-red birch-rod ready for use on Ash Wednesday. But Spring pulled the lower branches of the bush aside and bent still more deeply towards the ground and sang more softly than ever:
 
 
Thou of all symbols, dearest yet,
My true, my lovely violet!
Soon sun will burn, soon rain will wet:
Be ready, no call needing!
And the violet shot up its broad green leaves from the ground to show Spring that it was ready.
 
Then the mist floated out over the valley. No one could see where it came from, but it came and remained for many a long day.
 
They were strange, silent days. Everywhere, everything and bubbled and and in the ground; and there was not a sound besides. Noiselessly, the mist over[41] the hills and into the woods and hung heavy dew-drops on every single . And the dew-drops dripped and fell from morn till eve and from eve till morn.
 
So thick was the mist that the river was hidden in it, till one could only hear it flow. And the hills were hidden and the woods, till one saw nothing but the outside trees and even that only as shadows against the damp, grey wall of mist.
 
But where the mist was thickest there was Spring. And the thicker the mist grew the brighter shone Spring’s green garb. And, all the time that the water oozed and the dew-drops dripped and the river flowed, Spring sang:
 
Softly slipping,
Little drop, go dripping, dripping!
But up in the mountains lay the Prince of Winter and . He saw how the snow melted and disappeared; he saw the flowers come and could do nothing to prevent it. The snow melted right up in the mountains; and he felt that it would become a bad business indeed if he did not put a stop to it.
 
So he stole down to the valley in the darkness of the night; and, next morning, there was ice on the puddles and the mist lay beaten down upon the meadow in sparkling hoar-frost.
 
But, when the young Prince of Spring saw this, he only laughed:
 
“That’s no use,” he said.
 
Then he raised his young face to the sky and called:
 
“Sun! Sun!”
 
And the sun appeared.
 
The clouds parted at once; and the sun melted the ice and the hoar-frost. Then he hid again behind the clouds. The mist floated over the hills anew, everything oozed and b............