The April to which I look forward is a thing of more marvels than the April the colts snuff up on the March winds, with such promises of life ahead that in sheer joy they suddenly send the mud splashing behind them in the paddock, rearing and chasing in the ecstasy of that beckoning festival.

The Easter to which I, as a Christian, look forward, comes after long Lent of February and March with their penance of pruning knife and scourging rain and skies grey-white as wood-ash in that long fast of bare black trees and beaten turf. But all through the forty days, Easter has been in the air; sometimes we have received the promise afar off, even before the immaculate conception of the first snowdrop in its humility. Certainly in March, when the sun is so veiled and weak that only the larks find it, when only jessamine and winter wallflowers give alms of gold, you may know the stir of sap under the dead bracken as you go to early Mass. England begins her preparations in good time, because she has always kept Easter with great liturgical splendour in her orchards and gardens, in field and farmhouse. She brings out the trinity cups of woodspurge and crocuses like gold, frankincense and myrrh, and St. Joseph’s violets, one by one. Then her gold and silver willow, white violets and wild daffodils, anemones under the old pear-tree, bracken fronds like a bishop’s pastoral staff, her yellow chickens and ducklings. In rain or sun, we hear the numes of bird-song, unconsciously obedient to the Motu proprio.