Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/145

I cannot easily forget the beauty of those terrestrial browns in the rain yesterday. The withered grass was not of that very pale, hoary brown that it is to-day, now that it is dry and lifeless; but being perfectly saturated and dripping with the rain, the whole hillside seemed to reflect a certain yellowish light so that you looked round for the sun in the midst of the storm. . . . . The cladonias crowning the knoll had richly expanded and erected themselves, though seen twenty rods off, and the knoll appeared swelling and bursting as with yeast. The various hues of brown were most beautifully blended, so that the earth appeared covered with the softest and most harmoniously spotted and tinted fur coat. . . . . In short, in these early spring rains, the withered herbage thus saturated, and reflecting its brightest withered tint, seems in a certain degree to have revived, and sympathizes with the fresh greenish, or yellowish, or brownish lichens in its midst, which also seemed to have withered. It seemed to me, and I think it may be the truth, that the abundant moisture, bringing out the highest color on the brown surface of the earth, generated a certain degree of light, which, when the rain held up a little, reminded you of the sun shining through a thick mist. . . . . The barrenest surfaces are perhaps the most inter-