`` I 'm so glad to see it once more , '' said Anne , on the first evening of its reappearance . `` I 've missed it so all winter . The northwestern sky has seemed blank and lonely without it . '' The land was tender with brand-new , golden-green , baby leaves . There was an emerald mist on the woods beyond the Glen . The seaward valleys were full of fairy mists at dawn . Vibrant winds came and went with salt foam in their breath . The sea laughed and flashed and preened and allured , like a beautiful , coquettish woman . The herring schooled and the fishing village woke to life . The harbor was alive with white sails making for the channel . The ships began to sail outward and inward again . `` On a spring day like this , '' said Anne , `` I know exactly what my soul will feel like on the resurrection morning . '' `` There are times in spring when I sorter feel that I might have been a poet if I 'd been caught young , '' remarked Captain Jim . `` I catch myself conning over old lines and verses I heard the schoolmaster reciting sixty years ago . They do n't trouble me at other times . Now I feel as if I had to get out on the rocks or the fields or the water and spout them . '' Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a load of shells for her garden , and a little bunch of sweet-grass which he had found in a ramble over the sand dunes . `` It 's getting real scarce along this shore now , '' he said . `` When I was a boy there was a-plenty of it . But now it 's only once in a while you 'll find a plot -- and never when you 're looking for it .
You jest have to stumble on it -- you 're walking along on the sand hills , never thinking of XXXXX -- and all at once the air is full of sweetness -- and there 's the grass under your feet .
Anne Glen Jim a-plenty evening golden-green morning seaward sorter sweet-grass