Brilliant, this day ? a young virtuoso of a day. Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors, deft hands. And every prodigy of green ? whether it's ferns or lichens or needles or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes ? greener than ever before. And the way the conifers hold new cones to the light for the blessing, a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind transcribes for them! A day that shines in the cold like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds with the claims of reasonable gloom.