The tulips are all a-blaze and a-stare, making one blink with the dazzle of their odorless beauty: the frolicsome young wind is shaking out their balm from the hyacinth-bells, and the sweet Nancies--my flowers--blowing all together, are swaying and _congeeing_ to the morning airs.
O wise men, who know all things, do you know this?
Can you tell it me?
Where does the flower hide her scent?
From what full cup of hidden sweets does one suck it?
It is one of those days when one feels most convinced of being immortal--when the spirits of men stretch out longing arms toward the All-Good, the Altogether Beautiful--when souls thirst for God, yearn most deeply for the well of his unfathomed truth--when, to those who have lost, their dead come back in most pleasant, gentle guise.

As for me, I have lost nothing and no one as yet.

All my treasures are still about me; I can stretch out live hands, and touch _them_ alive; none of my dear names are yet to be spoken sparingly with bated breath, as too holy for common talk.

And yet I, too, as I walk and bask, and bend to smell the hyacinth-blooms, feel that same vague and most unnamed yearning--a delicate pain that he who has it would barter for no boisterous joy.

The clocks tick out the scented hours, and with loud singing of happy birds, with pomp of flowers and bees, and freaked butterflies, God's day treads royally past.
It is afternoon, and the morning wind, heaving with too much fragrance, has lain down to sleep.