What are the signs of the coming of Spring in the South? In
the grey North
it is easy to say; the sun returns, the flowers
reappear, the hedgerows and
trees clothe themselves in green,
and the time of the singing of birds is
come. But in Languedoc
we have lacked none of these. Cypress and pine and
olive
have never shed their leaves, the sun has shone even when the
icy mistral blew from the frozen gorges of the snow-clad
Cevennes, and
there has been no day on which we could not
pull a handful of flowers. The
yellow ragwort, the pink
geranium, the dull grey green spikes of lavender,
the red balls
of the butcher's broom, the livid clusters of ivy berries,
and the
strange, beautiful, golden-green spurges have shone in every
lane. Perhaps the morning on which a sleepy lizard looks out
of a cranny in
some wall is really the first of Spring. In a few
days a hundred little
bright-eyed heads may be counted in
every wall, and Spring is upon us. Each
day the little lane we
know best has a fresh flower to show. The yellow
flowers come
first, then the white and blue, the delicate rich purple of
the
grape hyacinth, the little blue veronica and milk-wort, violets,
and
the star-flowers of the wild strawberry. And in a single night,
as
it seems, a miracle is wrought. Every hedgerow breaks out
the land with a
flush of tender colour.
The narcissus is out at Lattes. How wonderful to find oneself
in the long
low meadows among them, the tall, sweetscented
blossoms which are scattered
as thickly as daisies
on an English sward! They edge the little
watercourses,
nestling round the roots of the stunted willows. The air
is
fragrant, the sky is cloudless, and the sunshine and the Spring
day
stir the blood like wine. To the South, hardly a league
away, is the deep
blue of the Mediterranean, glittering and
gay. And dark on the shore rises
the deserted abbey of
Maguelone, grey and timeworn, keeping ward amid
the
barren dunes—Maguelone, greatly fallen, its good days done.
No sign of Spring there save for the violet wall-flowers
clinging among the
grey stones. Life has ebbed away from
it, and left it lonely with the great
dead who sleep in its
forsaken aisles. Thither no more come prince and
bishop; no
strangers pass that way save a very few. 'Sunt lacrymae
rerum.' Even here among the sunny meadows, steeped
though we be in the
sensuous joy of the moment, interpreted
to us by the heavy scent of the
narcissus, comes a cry from the
Everlasting Past, a rustle of the Wind of
Death.
Nevertheless we shall not die but live. A new spirit is abroad
in the world,
and around us the whole land is breaking into
song. Not Mistral only, but a
host of lesser men, like a choir
of singing birds, are making music because
the world is young.
These are the sons, spiritually begotten, of Troubadour
and
Minstrel: these keep alive the memory of the ancient glory of
Languedoc and Provence, and of the days when their sweet
rich speech was
the courtliest tongue in Europe. It lives still
on the lips of the folk, of
the poet, of the scholar; it is quickening
into a richer and fuller beauty,
and a day may yet come
when for our love-songs we turn once more to
Provence. It is
a snatch of Mistral that yonder lad is humming,
What a simple, confident, lusty song! There is no hint of
weariness, or
disillusion or distrust in this new singing-time.
This land is dear to the
sun, and it is good to be alive therein.
It is the land of fig and vine and
olive, of love and wine and
song. And so we hear anew the refrain of the
oldest love-song
we know, 'The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and
the
vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my
love, my
fair one, and come away.' Three thousand
years have neither changed nor
chastened
the incorrigible heart of Spring.