Shivering

“ At this season swifts are very noisy. Throughout the day and at frequent intervals during the night they emit loud shivering screams. At sunset they hold high carnival, playing, at breakneck speed and to the accompaniment of much screaming, a game of "follow the man from Cook's." ”

“ This unfortunate set-back reacted on the men, who, because of the blanket shortage were doomed to but ONE per man throughout the winter night of fierce cold, against which the shivering, suffering lads had as protection billets without roofs and in some instances with mere relics of sides. The pain was acute, sleep difficult. Some unable to withstand the torture paced up and down the whole night through, banging arms heavily across bodies to stimulate some semblance of warmth. ”

“ As I in hoary Winter's night stood shiveringe in the snowe, ”

“ What is that shiver which tells us, spite of fires and closed doors, that the turn of the night has come; that chill which creeps through the body, even in the summer time, if we are keeping our solitary watch by the sick-bed, or travelling hour after hour through the darkness? ”

“ The icy shiver that runs across the world when day dawns grew into a windy gust from the west, extinguishing the fluttering candle flame and blowing the lace curtains out eastward like white sails bearing away the happy spirit to crystal seas. At the edge of the sky, where the morning star burned, a thread of orange glowed in the soft pearl grey of the new day, and only the crowing of the game cocks from their cedar thicket broke the silence that death consecrates. ”

“ It is scarcely presumable that one would be blessed with rosy-hued visions of pleasure under such conditions, however, and near midnight I awake in a cold shiver. The snowy mountains rear their white heads up in the silent night, grim and ghostly all around, and make the midnight air chilly, even in midsummer. ”

“ Vainly Daylight staggered and stumbled and fell and crept through the snow that was wet with thaw, or across it when the night's frost still crusted it beyond the weight of a man, searching for one more squirrel, striving to achieve one more transmutation of furry leap and scolding chatter into the lifts and tugs of a man's body that would hoist the boat over the rim of shore-ice and slide it down into the stream. ”

“ But the stream was starker, the spate was darker,
Than man might live and swim.
In, in, out and in,
Blaws the wind and whirls the whin.
The first ae step they strode therein,
It smote them foot and knee:
But ere they wan to the mid water
The spate was as the sea.
In, in, out and in,
Blaws the wind and whirls the whin.
But when they wan to the mid water,
It smote them hand and head:
And nae man knows but the wave that flows
Where they lie drowned and dead. ”

“ One evening, as if drawn up by some mighty hand, the fog lifted, disclosing the sun, cold, red, and angry-looking, glaring at us out of a sombre sky, and flushing the water and the bergs round about with a flood of purple light, on which our masts and rigging cast tremulous, long, black shadows, crossing and recrossing in a quivering maze, with big, shapeless blotches here and there for the sails. ”

“ All thy ways are good, O wind, and all the world should fester,
Were thy fourfold godhead quenched, or stilled thy strife:
Yet the waves and we desire too long the deep south-wester,
Whence the waters quicken shoreward, clothed with life.
[Pg 235] Yet the field not made for ploughing save of keels nor harrowing
Save of storm-winds lies unbrightened by thy breath:
Banded broad with ruddy samphire glow the sea-banks narrowing
Westward, while the sea gleams chill and still as death. ”

“ The night of the big wind was followed by a day and a night of gusts of wind and sleety rain; then followed a day and a night of rising clouds, then a day when the clouds were scattered and the sun was cold. That day the sunset was grim, white, and freezing cold.
In the morning there was a bright, warm sunrise, a breath of sweet, soft air, and unimaginable brightness and buoyancy, birds singing, squirrels barking, and all the dismal pangs banished. ”

“ The sea-wind murmuring through these thickets at nightfall or misty sunrise, conveys no fever to the peasants stretched among their flowers. They watch the red rays of sunset flaming through the columns of the leafy hall, and flaring on its fretted rafters of entangled boughs; they see the stars come out, and Hesper gleam, an eye of brightness, among dewy branches; the moon walks silver-footed on the velvet tree-tops, while they sleep beside the camp-fires; fresh morning wakes them to the sound of birds and scent of thyme and twinkling of dewdrops on the grass around. ”

“ With a rapturous shiver—
Like that that makes eager the pulse of the river
⁠When something at last tells it Winter is past—
Awoke at the sound of her voice, and replied.
⁠A libation to Spring!—ah, quickly! pour fast! ”

“ The depths of winter reached. Thoughtful, thoughtless words—the depths of winter. Everything gone inward and downward from surface and summit, Nature at low tide. In its time will come the height of summer, when the tides of life rise to the tree-tops, or be dashed as silvery insect spray all but to the clouds. So bleak a season touches my concern for birds, which never seem quite at home in this world; and the winter has been most lean and hungry for them. ”

“ A shiver comes over cattle, a horror over fish in the water, a strangeness over birds of the air, and weariness over human beings, for the dear sun no longer shines, nor does the moonshine diffuse light upon these wretched ones, these unfortunates. ”

“ They try again and again, and each time the shell changes hands, and nobody can explain how on earth it could have jumped from one man to the other. It seems too strange to be natural, and while a cold shiver creeps up their backs, they play on and on, with ever new delight and wonder. ”

“ A swim was generally the first thing, and I mention a swim because it brings me to the way in which this mere pond illustrated the great ocean which encircles the world. For it is well known that the mighty ocean is belted with currents, the cold water of the Polar seas seeking the warmth of the Equator, and the warm water of the Equator floating—like the Gulf Stream—towards the Pole, floating because (I think I am right) the warm water runs on the surface. ”

“ Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our sieve we spin." Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live: Their heads are green, and their hands are blue; And they went to sea in a sieve. ”

“ Returning to the river, I plunged into the current to relieve me from the pinching frost, that gnawed every part of my skin that had become wet; and rushing forward as fast as the weight of the water, that pressed me downward, would permit, was soon up to my chin in melted ice, when rising to the surface, I exerted my utmost strength and skill to gain the opposite shore by swimming in the shortest space of time. At every stroke of my arms and legs, they were cut and bruised by cakes of solid ice, or weighed down by floating masses of congealed snow. ”

“ The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls about, and its cold push at the first causes a lifting feeling in the chest—a gulp and pant—as if it were too keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood meets it, and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour. ”

“ Reading the earlier and the later Swinburne on a high rock around which the sea is washing, one is struck by the way in which these cadences, in their unending, ever-varying flow, seem to harmonise with the rhythm of the sea. Here one finds, at least, and it is a great thing to find, a rhythm inherent in nature. ”

“ Those water-waifs that but the sea-wind steers,
Flakes of glad foam or flowers on footless ways
That take the wind in season and the sun,
And when the wind wills is their season done.
For all my days as all thy days from birth
My heart as thy heart was in me as thee,
Fire; and not all the fountains of the sea
Have waves enough to quench it, nor on earth
Is fuel enough to feed,
While day sows night and night sows day for seed. ”

“ Over all lay a strange light, pallid, ghastly, where the sea spray whirled across the landscape and drove into my face until it grew numb with the cold. In broad bands, rank after rank, billow on billow, the rain burst out across the endless moors, and yet there was no wind to drive it at such a pace. ”

“ These whereby we stand no shore beyond us limits: these are free.
Gazing hence, we see the water that grows iron round the Pole,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.
Sail on sail along the sea-line fades and flashes; here on land
Flash and fade the wheeling wings on wings of mews that plunge and scream.
Hour on hour along the line of life and time's evasive strand
Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes, slays and dies: and scarce they seem
More than motes that thronged and trembled in the brief noon's breath and beam. ”

“ As a flock by division
Of death to be thinned,
As the shades in a vision
Of spirits that sinned;
So glimmer their shrouds and their sheetings as clouds on the stream of the wind.
But the sun stands fast,
And the sea burns bright,
And the flight of them past
Is no more than the flight
Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised and afloat in the light.
Like flowers upon flowers
In a festival way
When hours after hours
Shed grace on the day,
White blossomlike butterflies hover and gleam through the snows of the spray. ”

“ Descending with a sweep, which, though majestic, is yet soft and gentle, it seems about to sink upon the waves, when, almost as it touches them, it glides again softly upwards, to descend once more in the same manner. Thus, ever rising and sinking, seeming always about to rest, yet never resting, it glides, tireless, and seems to coquet with the sea. On land, too, these wide circling sweeps had had a grace and charm, but it had not entirely pleased the eye. ”

“ You do not freeze, but you shiver; your fingers do not become numb with cold, but you have all the while an uneasy craving for more positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk mechanically towards it, and, suddenly awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing there. ”

“ Some are in the abode of the tempests; others swim openly in the transparency of the cold waves, browse like oxen over the coral plains, sniff in with their nostrils the ebbing tide, or carry on their shoulders the weight of the ocean-springs. ”

“ Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden
Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway—
Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden
Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay.
Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming
Waste of the water without, waste of the water within,
Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming
Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. ”

“ A great wind arose over the land, the clouds flew across the sky, and it grew as dark as night; the leaves fell from the trees, and the water foamed and dashed upon the shore. In the distance the ships were being tossed to and fro on the waves, and he heard them firing signals of distress. ”

“ Though the tide that feels the west wind lift it, wave by widening wave,
Wax not yet to height and fullness of the storm that smites to save,
None shall bid the flood back seaward till no bar be left to brave. ”

“ It comes as no other breeze comes, and feels as no other breeze feels. At first two or three whiffles make darkened tracks on the glassy waters. Then half the sea afar off is covered with ripples. The ripples come creeping on, and the wind has reached the shore. ”

“ In listening to poetry, drama, or heroic narrative, we are often surprised at the cutaneous shiver which like a sudden wave flows over us, and at the heart-swelling and the lachrymal effusion that unexpectedly catch us at intervals. ”

“ They’ll just naturally stand like pillars at each corner. They’ve been waiting for the house for a long time, and when the wind comes up at night I’ve heard them start with a low, cooing little shiver and work up to a perfect wail about it. ”

“ The forms of clouds are interesting, often, as now, like flames, or more like the surf curling before it breaks, reminding me of the prows of ancient vessels which have their pattern or prototype again in the surf, as if the wind made a surf of the mist. ”

“ Fall.—The fall migration of snipe is dependent on the weather, the first early frosts are apt to start them along; when the brilliant red leaves of the swamp maples add their touch of color to the marshes, and when the vegetation in the meadows begins to take on the rich hues of autumn, then we may look for the coming of the snipe. ”

“ Waves " is just the word, for every branchlet, every twig, every stem and flower, ofttimes clad in more than rainbow brightness of colour and sparkling with light, seems instinct with half-animal power of life and motion, and even in weather so calm that there is not so much as a ripple upon the ocean's breast, we may see them gently moving to and fro. ”

“ We count a dozen foaming cataracts, all in sight at once, and falling down over precipitous rocks around us into the sea. The wind perceptibly sways them hither and thither, and then dispersing the lower portion of the water raises it in silvery clouds of vapour on which rainbows play. ”

“ With the first blossoms of spring the thoughts of many men, both old and young, turn lightly to love—the love of angling. And as the leaves unfold, and the birds begin their wooing, and the streams become clear, the premonitory symptoms of the affection are manifested in a rummaging of drawers and lockers for fly-books and tackle boxes, and the critical examination of rods and reels, and in the testing of lines and leaders. ”