Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner

Spring, like a soft breeze, was in the rector's fringe of hair as with upflung head he tramped the porch like an old warhorse who hears again a trumpet after he had long thought all wars were done. Birds in a wind across the lawn, parabolic from tree to tree, and a tree at the corner of the house turning upward its white-bellied leaves in a passionate arrested rush: it and the rector faced each other in ecstasy. A friend came morosely along the path from the kitchen door.

"Good morning, Mr. Jones," the rector boomed, scattering sparrows from the screening vine. The tree to his voice took a more unbearable ecstasy, its twinkling leaves swirled in a never-escaping silver skyward rush.