Commonplace Book

'...The ancient immemorial joy of a thousand departed Aprils stirs from its lurking sleep in those placid veins of yours, and would lure you away beyond the limits of the town. It is the old spring fret that moved myriads of your fellows long before, and will move others when we are gone. But for the ample moment, the large sufficient now, our glad elasticity of spirit, our rapturous exhilaration of life, are as keen as if they were to be eternal. Indeed, they are the eternal part of us, of which we partake in these rare instants of existence.'

from April in Town, a piece in The Kinship of Nature by Bliss Carman