The Winter's Tale

“ The marvel of the reappearing earth in the springtime after the long months of winter ... The dreaded snow stealing away in prankish rivulets down every slope; the tree-roots first resurgent, then the mosses drenched with wet, soon the ground freed from its burden whereon one treads with delighted glances and sighs of happiness like the sick man who feels glad life returning to his veins ... Later yet, the birches, alders, aspens swelling into bud; the laurel clothing itself in rosy bloom ... The rough battle with the soil a seeming holiday to men no longer condemned to idleness ”

“ We plucked Life's blossoms long ago
What's left is but December's snow.
But winter has its joys as fair,
⁠The gentler joys, aloof, apart;
The snow may lie upon our hair
⁠But never, darling, in our heart. ”

“ This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring. ”

“ The Winter's Tale, from The Plays of William Shakespeare, in eight volumes, vol. II, with notes by Samuel Johnson (1765) IA The Winter's Tale, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Vol. III, Oxford edition (1910) IA The Winter's Tale, edited by F. W. Moorman, The Works of Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare, 1st ser. ”

“ Those who know the country only in summer, know it scarcely at all. From the first November snowstorm to the last drift melting before the winds of late March on the northern side of a pasture wall, the winter season is a perpetual revelation of subtle colour harmonies, of exquisite compositions, of dramas on the trodden snow, of sweet, close-companioned hours before wood fires that crackle, shut into “a tumultuous privacy of storm.” ”

“ Let the snow lie warmly upon the tender seed. Learn to endure the thought that another is worshipped whilst thou art still lord. Learn to endure being forgotten while yet thou livest. The hour of thy freedom will come when Spring appears."
"And when will Spring come?" asked Winter.
"It will come when the stork returns."
And with white locks and snowy beard, cold, bent, and hoary, but strong as the wintry storm, and firm as the ice, old Winter sat on the snowdrift-covered hill, looking towards the south, where Winter had sat before, and gazed. ”

“ My dear brethren, the time of our lives is a cold and stormy winter: "winter is now past," says the soul of the just man when departing from this world. During this gloomy season everything is under a cloud; most things are hidden by a heavy mantle of snow. ”

“ Never did eager British children look for the first violets and primroses of spring with more impatience than my baby boys and girls watched, day after day, for the first snow-flakes that were to form the road to convey them to their absent father.
"Winter never means to come this year. It will never snow again?" ”

“ Which thy own season paints, when nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.
And see where surly Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shattered forest, and the ravaged vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch—
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost—
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless ”

“ It was impossible to think of the inn to which I was going, and hardly of the one which I had left. How could their fires have survived the all-pervading silent snow? When one is comfortable, near a fire or within reach of one, and in company, winter is thought of as a time of activity, of glowing faces, of elements despised, and even a poetry book brings back the spring: one will run, or eat chestnuts, or read a book, or look at a picture to-morrow, and so the winter flies. ”

“ The gathering of the enormous drifts that begins in November and continues until March is another winter fact that touches the imagination. The sight of these vast curled waves of snow is undeniably impressive⁠—accumulating with every fresh fall for delivery in the spring. ”

“ Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushes fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the shrinking form of Spring, yet step by step he is compelled to retreat northward, and spends the summer month within the Arctic circle. ”

“ Then everything grows and it is all in one blossom. On the wide fields there is much grain, and all hearts are singing. Even after the frost, everything is glad for a little while, and then, very slowly, it is Winter once more.
“Little lady, do you not see? There must always be Winter, there must always be night and storm and cold. It is then that the flowers rest—they cannot always be in bloom. ”

“ The snow crackled beneath the feet as if every one had on new boots, and one shooting star after another fell from the sky. In warm rooms there could be seen the Christmas trees, decked out with presents and lighted up amid festivities and joy. In the country farmhouses could be heard the sound of a violin, and there were games for apples, so that even the poorest child could say, "It is beautiful in winter." ”

“ The song of the bird, the murmur of the stream, the breathing fragrance of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the golden pomp of autumn; earth with its mantle of refreshing green, and heaven with its deep delicious blue and its cloudy magnificence, all fill us with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel in the luxury of mere sensation. But in the depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn for our gratifications to moral sources. ”

“ Winter, in wide, snow-covered plains,
⁠And drifting sleet, and piercing wind,
That chills the blood within our veins,
⁠But our warm hearts can never find -
Ah, little love, you guess, I know,
⁠What warms our hearts in spite of snow. ”

“ Then comes your summer, with its green meads, and fields of waving corn, and rich fruit. No artist can paint, no language can set forth, the grandeur of your clime during autumn. What have you afterwards? Cold, icy, and chilling winter, with its dank and cold atmosphere; with your hills, mountains, and even your dales, covered with snow. In winter your country seems dead, clay-like, and lifeless; sad and dreary to me is your winter scene. In this land we have perpetual spring. ”

“ Why, mamma, the snow-flakes have turned to birds
WAITING A WINTER'S TALE. By Mrs. Sallie M. B. Piatt. SOME sweet things go just to make room for
others:
The blue field-blossom hurries from the dew,
(My little maiden, hush your noisy brothers!)
And see, the wild-rose reddens where it grew!
The green leaf fades that you may see the yellow;
We have the honey when we miss the bee;
Who wants the apples, scarlet-stained and mellow,
Must give the buds upon his orchard-tree ”

“ INTRODUCTION
“Once upon a time,” in the winter season suggests happy, young faces grouped about a blazing fire. A heavy snowstorm promises plenty of sport for tomorrow, but at present the cosiness indoors is very attractive, especially now that the evening story hour is at hand. And while the story-teller is slowly choosing his subjects he hears the children’s impatient whispers of “The Snow Man,” “Prince Winter,” “The Legend of Holly,” “The Animals’ Christmas Tree.” ”

“ For it is one of the dangers of the retrospective habit that it incapacitates us for the realization of the present hour. Much dwelling on last year's snow will make us forget the summer flowers. Dreaming of fair faces that are gone, we will look with unseeing eyes into the fair faces that companion us still. To the Spring we say: "What of all your blossom, and all your singing! Autumn is already at your heels, like a shadow; and Winter waits for you like a marble tomb." ”

“ THE SNOW-WALKERS.
HE who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,—the day and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. ”

“ Descriptions of winter are rare in his books, but the opening chapter of "The Last Joy" finds the Wanderer snowbound in a hut far up in the mountains, and although he watches the spring awakening of nature, he knows that in his own life winter has come to stay. ”

“ The snow-flakes chase each other, the ice cracks, the storm rules without, for he has the might, he is lord—but not the LORD OF ALL.
It is winter time. The wind is sharp as a two-edged sword, the snow-flakes chase each other; it seems as though it had been snowing for days and weeks, and the snow lies like a great mountain over the whole town, like a heavy dream of the winter night. Everything on the earth is hidden away, only the golden cross of the church, the symbol of faith, arises over the snow grave, and gleams in the blue air and in the bright sunshine. ”

“ With life's wild rapture eager, hastening;
How should they know that Winter yet must bring
Its icy chains to bind the tender feet—
That driving storms of snow and chilling sleet
And javelins of frost shall smite and sting? ”

“ Its slow days drag, Yet hasten at speed To leave us in chilly need For Winter to strip indeed. In all-lack Winter, Dull of sense and of sound, We huddle and shiver Beside our splinter Of crackling pine, Snow in sky and snow on ground. ”

“ Barnes and Dolly when I go back to England? The weather was a little fidgety to-day and yesterday, a little troubled, like a creature that stirs fretfully in its sleep, and it set me thinking. For once the change really begins at this time of the year it doesn't stop any more. It goes on through an increasing unpleasantness winds, rain, snow, blizzards—till, after Christmas, the real winter begins, without a cloud, without a stir of the air, its short days flooded with sunshine, its dawns and twilights miracles of colour. ”

“ Gentle Spring! in sunshine clad, Well dost thou thy power display! For Winter maketh the light heart sad, And thou, thou makest the sad heart gay. He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train, The sleet, and the snow, and the wind, and the rain; And they shrink away, and they flee in fear, When thy merry step draws near. Winter giveth the fields and the trees, so old, Their beards of icicles and snow; And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold, We must cower over the embers low ”

“ So winter’s ragged power affects all nature through.
What different changes winter’s frowns supply:
The clown no more a loitering hour beguiles,
Nor gaping tracks the clouds along the sky,
As when buds blossom, and the warm sun smiles,
And “Lawrence wages bids” on hills and stiles;
Banks, stiles, and flowers, and skies, no longer charm;
Deep drifting snow each summer-seat defiles ”

“ Each foot of earth, each glen and glimmering glade,
Each rood of windy wood,
Where late gaunt Winter stood,
Shaggy with snow and howling at the sky;
Where even now the Springtime seems afraid
To whisper of the beauty she designs,
The flowery campaign that she now outlines
Within her soul; her heart’s conspiracy
To take the world with loveliness; defy
And then o’erwhelm the Death—that Winter throned
Amid the trees,—with love that she hath owned
Since God informed her from His very breath,
Giving her right triumphant over Death. ”

“ For you, who see so many things, a little snow is nothing, and it is here a great event, especially when I used to make snowballs; but that has been for a long time a lost pleasure. Winter gives me only the sweet warmth of the chimney corner—that is the pleasure of the old. ”

“ Sir, the yeare growing ancient, Not yet on summers death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter, the fayrest flowres o'th season Are our Carnations, and streak'd Gilly-vors, (Which some call Natures bastards) of that kind Our rusticke Gardens barren, and I care not To get slips of them
Pol. ”

“ But our prevalent association with winter, in the Northern United States, is with something white and dazzling and brilliant; and it is time to paint our own pictures, and cease to borrow these gloomy alien tints. One must turn eagerly every season to the few glimpses of American winter aspects: to Emerson's "Snow-Storm," every word a sculpture,—to the admirable storm in "Margaret,"—to Thoreau's "Winter Walk," in the "Dial,"—and to Lowell's "First Snow-Flake." ”

“ Not so with an old man—the present company always excepted;—his sap is not sunk down to his toes, but much of it is gone clean out of the system—therefore, individual natural objects in Winter are not analogically emblematical of people stricken in years. Far less does the Winter itself of the year, considered as a season, resemble the old age of life considered as a season. To what peculiarities, pray, in the character and conduct of aged gentlemen in general, do rain, sleet, hail, frost, ice, snow, winds, blasts, storms, hurricanes, and occasional thunder and lightning, bear analogy? ”

“ By many busy hands is shorn;
Autumn’s ripe fruits, an ample store,
Are gathered in for rich and poor. WINTER
Winter’s cold frost and northern blast—
This is the season that comes last:
The snow has come, the sleigh-bells ring,
And merry boys rejoice and sing. THE SNOW
Oh, see! the snow is falling now,
It powders all the trees;
Its flakes abound, and all around
They float upon the breeze.
’Tis snowing fast, and cold the blast,
But yet I hope ’twill stay:
Oh, see it blow the falling snow
In meadows far away.
Jack Frost is near, we feel him here,
He’s on his icy sled ”

“ O Winter, O white winter, wert thou gone
No more within the wilds were I alone
Leaping with bent bow over stock and stone!
No more alone my love the lamp should burn,
Watching the weary spindle twist and turn,
Or o’er the web hold back her tears and yearn:
O winter, O white winter, wert thou gone!
The Maidens.
Sweet thoughts fly swiftlier than the drifting snow,
And with the twisting threads sweet longings grow,
And o’er the web sweet pictures come and go,
For no white winter are we long alone.
The Youths. ”