The Mole had been working
very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms,
then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a
pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash
all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in
the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark
and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was
small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said,
"Bother!" and "O blow!" and also "Hang
spring-cleaning!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put
on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for
the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to
the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to
the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and
then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily
with his little paws and muttering to himself, "Up we go! Up we go!"
till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself
rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.
"This is fine!" he
said to himself. "This is better than whitewashing!" The sunshine
struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the
seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds
fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs
at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning,
he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further
side.
…
It all seemed too good to be
true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the
hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers
budding, leaves thrusting—everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And
instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering
"whitewash!" he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the
only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a
holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself,
as to see all the other fellows busy working.
-The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-RuBfKfPOk
To Spring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FElfbVO3NeE
Spring is Here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjuF_wiOds0
Spring Cleaning
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