If there comes a little thaw, Still the air is chill and raw, Here and there a patch of snow, Dirtier than the ground below, Dribbles down a marshy flood Ankle-deep you stick in mud In the meadows while you sing, This is Spring.

But now I rejoice when, in my winter studio, I can spread out my summer studies and recall through them the beautiful season and places which gave them being. Here the painter feels how small things may suggest the greater - the drop of water, image the firmament.

Beautiful and rare Aurora, In the heavens thou art their Flora

I become more and more inclined to sink the minister in the man, and abandon my present calling in toto as a profession... to create a living religion in landscape painting.

He that would earn the Poet's sacred name, Must write for future as for present ages.

O Light divine! we need no fuller test That all is ordered well We know enough to trust that all is best Where Love and Wisdom dwell.