The Woman's Voice desired of me that I offer it a pleasant talk of spring. So I said to myself: Is a talk "on spring" to be asked of a man whose ears the crickets of summer have all but deafened? And I feared that Gibran's words might prove true of us:

Would that I knew—is there any return for what has passed, or any coming back of a beloved and a familiar friend? Can September comprehend the melodies of spring with autumn's leaves upon its ears?

But then I remembered a little piece of verse we used to chant as children, singing:

Winter is gone, spring has come— clap, clap your hands, Wadih!

And I said: perhaps I am the fittest of The Woman's Voice's friends for this talk. Nor did it trouble me much whether Gibran's words proved true of us. Rather I found myself murmuring, without quite meaning to, some verses of Abu Madi:

So if the earth folds us away from its flowers, and the dark is empty of us while full moons fill it, you shall return, a perfumed thicket in whose heights I am a spellbound nightingale, singing to her and flying about her sides, and she brightens when he sings and when he flies.

However that may be, I shall clap with the clappers and sing with the singers, and it is all one to me whether I be thirty or sixty! I shall listen forever to the songs of spring so long as a heart beats in my breast and a tongue stirs in my mouth. The poet can do no other than speak of spring and its birds, its brooks and its greenery, its evenings and its dawns, its lights and its blossoms. For spring is the poem of the Lord of the Worlds, which He wrought of roses and jasmine, of narcissus and eglantine. That is why the poets have preferred spring to all the other seasons, and al-Sanawbari spoke with their tongue:

If in summer there be sweet basil and fruit, still the earth is a brazier and the air an oven; and if in autumn the palms be ready for picking, still the earth is naked and the air bitter cold; and if in winter the rain fall without ceasing, still the earth is besieged and the air held captive. Time is nothing but luminous spring: when spring comes, blossom and light come to you—

The earth is a ruby and the air a pearl, the plants are turquoise and the water crystal.

And one poet said:

Four things give life indeed to spirit, soul, and body: water, and greenery, and boon companions, and a comely form.

And al-Mutanabbi said:

The dwellings of the vale, for sweetness among all dwellings, hold the place of spring among the seasons.

And I share Bechara al-Khoury's astonished wonder at the beauty who shuns the inspired poet and grants him nothing of her magic and her perfume, when, had she any sense, poetry would have moved her to give and song would have tempted her—for in poetry there is immortality for her, and permanence for her beauty:

Marvel, then, at a possessor of beauty who spurns a poet who lives on to immortalize her, and shies away! What is beauty, were it not for poetry, but a flower the glance toys with for two brief moments? Yet if some tenderness from a poet reach it, or a tear come falling down, the blood of immortality runs in its petals, and fate lies asleep beneath its feet.

The true poet has sung his verses to spring only to fashion them into necklaces for the throat of the gardens and the fields—magic necklaces, every bead of which splits open upon a spring: a world looks out of it, a love shines forth, a wing beats. Then are tongues loosed from their tether—God unties their knots—that they may tell of God's blessings. Then the storm falls silent, the face of the sky clears, the stars peer out of their coverts, the night hushes to listen, the throats of lovers break into song, the roses meet one another to the measure of the brooks and pools, and the birds swing on the branches, singing and caroling. And how splendid is the quickening of spring in the picture Salah al-Asir paints:

Spring has appeared in shining splendor, generous of airs, wide of purpose, sowing warmth in space, moving softly on, dyeing with perfumes the face of the hollows; the gleam of song has filled the earth's expanse with plenty, and filled the hopes of men; you see the trees leaping toward the heights, green with pride, laughing at their new birth, embracing the bird that had grown weary of winter's lightnings and its thunders; the air grows sweet in the clear procession, and fragrance drifts through every valley—

and you see the woodland fresh, and the red