For nothing brings joy to the heart like the coming of spring.

The folk who do be blind all the rest of the year, their eyes do open then, and a sunset takes them, and the wee virgin flowers coming up between the stones, or the twitter of a bird upon the bough...

And young women do be preening themselves, and young men do be singing, even they that have the voices of rooks.

There is something stirring in them that is stirring, in the ground, with the bursting of the seeds...
And young Marco Polo threw down the quill in the counting house where he was learning his trade.

The night was coming on.