The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.

This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living.

It came from the things that lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not moved during the long months of frost.

The sap was rising in the pines.
The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds.

Shrubs and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green.