Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song ? if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.