Some Spring Days in Iowa

Spring Days in Iowa, by
Frederick John Lazell

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Title: Some Spring Days in Iowa
Author: Frederick John Lazell
Release Date: April 22, 2006 [EBook #18227]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Some Spring Days in Iowa
BY Frederick John Lazell
[Illustration]
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA THE TORCH PRESS NINETEEN
HUNDRED EIGHT

COPYRIGHT, 1908 BY FRED J. LAZELL

FOREWORD
It is indeed a pleasure thus to open the gate while my friend leads us
away from the din and rush of the city into "God's great out-of-doors."
Having walked with him on "Some Winter Days," one is all the more
eager to follow him in the gentler months of Spring--that
mother-season, with its brooding pathos, and its seeds stirring in their
sleep as if they dreamed of flowers.
Our guide is at once an expert and a friend, a man of science and a poet.
If he should sleep a year, like dear old Rip, he would know, by the
calendar of the flowers, what day of the month he awoke. He knows the
story of trees, the arts of insects, the habits of birds and their parts of
speech. His wealth of detail is amazing, but never wearying, and he is
happily allusive to the nature-lore of the poets, and to the legends and
myths of the woodland. He has the insight of Thoreau, the patience of
Burroughs, and a nameless quality of his own--a blend of joyous love
and wonder. His style is as lucid as sunlight, investing his pages with
something of the simplicity and calm of Nature herself. The fine sanity
and health of the man are in the book, as of one to whom the beauty of
the world is reason enough for life, and an invitation to live well. He
does not preach--though he sometimes stops to point to a forest vista,
or a sunset, where the colors are melted into a beauty too fair and frail

for this earth.
Let us hope that the author will complete his history of the seasons, and
tell of us of Summer with its riot of life and loveliness, and of the
Autumn-time with its pensive, dreamy beauty that is akin to death. He
is a teacher of truth and good-will, of health and wisdom, of the
brotherhood of all breathing things. Having opened the gate, I leave it
open for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
JOSEPH NEWTON
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA DECEMBER 1, 1908

APRIL--BUDS AND BIRD SONGS

IV. APRIL--BUDS AND BIRD SONGS
"Has she not shown us all? From the clear space of ether, to the small
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning Of Jove's large
eyebrow, to the tender greening Of April meadows?"
"And whiles Zeus gives the sunshine, whiles the rain."
A strong southeast wind is blowing straight up the broad river, driving
big undulations up the stream, counter to the current which, in turn,
pushes at the base of the waves and causes their wind-driven crests to
fall forward and break into spray. The whole surface of the river is
flecked with these whitecaps, a rare sight on an inland stream but
characteristic of April. We sit on a ledge of rock high up the slope of
the cañon and listen as they break, break, break. We may close our eyes
and fancy we are with Edmund Danton in his sea-girt dungeon, or with
Tennyson and his "cold, gray stones," or with King Canute and his
flattering courtiers on the sandy shore. But a song sparrow with his
recitative "Oleet, oleet, oleet," followed by the well-known cadenza,
dispels the fancies and calls our attention to himself as he sits on a hop

hornbeam and sings at half-minute intervals. The wind ruffles his sober
coat of brown and gray and he looks like a careless artist, thrilling with
the soul of song.
Notwithstanding the high wind there is a heavy haze through which the
sun casts but faint shadows. Across the white-flecked river the emerald
meadow rises in a mile long slope