NEWSLETTER No. 54 April 1992 Dear Friend of the Library, BOOK SALE Preparations for the sale on Saturday/Sunday, June 27/28 in the Ice Arena are going ahead. Book sorting is in progress as and when batches of books come available, and Natalie Logan would be glad to hear from you if you can spare some time to give her a hand. Her telephone number is 922-6281. Thanks. SPRING The Spring is sprung, The grass is riz. I wonder where the birdies is? The birdies is upon the wing. But that's absurd, The wing is on the bird. ANON. And now, in more dignified fashion: So then the year is repeating its old story again. We are come once more, thank God! to its most charming chapter. It always makes a pleasant impression on us, when we open again at these pages of the book of life. (Goethe). If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be. (Longfellow). Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; echo the mountains round: the forest smiles; and every sense, and every heart is joy. (James Thomson). T.S. Eliot, in his poem "The Waste Land" is more gloomy: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Vita Sackville-West, in her long poem "The Garden" is much more positive when she says, in reply to this verse of Eliot's; Would that my pen like a blue bayonet Might skewer all such cats'-meat of defeat;