Snowflake

“ Then on your dark coat sleeve something soft and white and glistening falls—a snowflake. You touch the bright thing and it disappears. Where did it come from and whither did it go? Others follow faster and faster, jostling each other as they whirl through the air. ”

“ And we can imagine that it played rare pranks with the proud, haughty folk on its return; for the wind, as you know, is no respecter of persons.
"Dear Barbara," said the snowflake, "I will watch with thee for the coming of the prince."
And Barbara was glad, for she loved the little snowflake, that was so pure and innocent and gentle.
"Tell us, O pine-tree," cried the vine, "what do you see in the east? Has the prince yet entered the forest?"
"The east is full of black clouds," said the pine-tree, "and the winds that hurry to the hill-tops sing of the snow." ”

“ See how dismal it looks, down there on the earth.
Instead of gay laughter, and shouting, and mirth,
The children are crying, their bright eyes are wet,
For thinking the snowflakes are going to forget. ”

“ He might not inappropriately be named the great Snowflake, though in winter he wears a warm brown cloak, with black stripes, brown collar, and a brown and white vest. In summer, however, he is snow white, with black on the back, wings, and tail. He lives all over northern North America, and in the United States as far south as Georgia.
About the first of November, flocks of Snowflakes may be seen arriving, the males chanting a very low and somewhat broken, but very pleasant song. ”

“ The stars make the sky sparkle like gold-fish In a glassy bowl. Bluebirds are gone now, But they left their song behind them. The moon seems to say: It is time for summer when the birds come back To pick up their lonesome songs.
SNOWSTORM Snowflakes are dancing. They run down out of heaven. Coming home from somewhere down the long tired road They flake us sometimes The way they do the grass, And the stretch of the world. The grass-blades are crowned with snowflakes. They make me think of daisies With white frills around their necks With golden faces and green gowns ”

“ Dazed and exhausted in the gulch below,
For storm-bewildered men will grope around
Describing circles in the blinding snow,
Until they sink, their vital forces spent,
And crystal snowflakes weave their cerement. ”

“ For days the great snowflakes had been falling over the small town out of an infinite sky-land, out of infinite sky-plains of infinite snow. And, after all the gloom of the dark days that had been, the days under the grey skies of storm and rain, it was now snowing whiter and whiter out of a denser greyness of sky-plains and sky-land, flakes falling upon flakes in a soft white shroud of oblivion that enveloped houses and people. ”

“ In summer there is a lot of fun to be had everywhere, but especially on the delightful hill back of our house— (I will tell you all about that hill some other time) ,—but in winter, humph! What can girls and boys do in such horrid mild winters as we are now having, I should really like to know! Last year we had no snow to speak of, and here it is now after New Year's and I haven't yet, to my recollection, seen a single snowflake which didn't melt in five minutes, or any ice that didn't break through as soon as you stamped your heel on it. ”

“ Flashing through the snowflakes and the veiled sun;
Every woman cheered you, some few women wept,
Graybeards longed to join you, peaceful babies slept;
But the land that bore you her own counsel kept.
Only, through the snowflakes sped a rift of light,
Keen as pointed sword-blade and intensely bright—
Like the Lord's hand resting on the ranks of right. ”

“ But she had to go to bed first, and all night she slept soundly on her bed of hay, dreaming of nothing but of shining mountains with red roses all over them, among which happy little Snowflake went leaping in and out. ”

“ The paths will soon be heaped up to their level. The snowflakes are as large as daisies. When I go out they flutter round me like a swarm of butterflies. Those that fall into the water disappear like shooting stars, leaving no trace behind.
The glass roof of my bedroom is as heavy as a coffin-lid. I sleep with my window open, and when there comes a blast of wind my eyes are filled with snow. This morning, when I woke, my pillow-case was as wet as though I had been crying all night.
Torp already sees us in imagination snowed up and receiving our food supplies down the chimney. ”

“ These snowflakes (mentioned collectively, for it is impossible to think of the bird except in great flocks) are the "true spirits of the snowstorm," says Thoreau. They are animated beings that ride upon it, and have their life in it. By comparison with the climate of the arctic regions, no doubt our hardiest winter weather seems luxuriously mild to them. We associate them only with those wonderful midwinter days when sky, fields, and woods alike are white, and a "hard, dull bitterness of cold" drives every other bird and beast to shelter. ”

“ The feathers of these Arctic wanderers are perfect non-conductors of heat and of cold, and never a chill reaches their little frames until hunger presses. Then they must find food and quickly, or they die. When these snowflakes first come to us they are tinged with gray and brown, but gradually through the winter their colours become more clear-cut and brilliant, until, when spring comes, they are garbed in contrasting black and white. ”

“ The winds, seemingly, would deter the snowflakes from their fruitless task of whitening the earth, catching them just before they reached the ground and whirling them around and around until the snowflakes, nimbly twisting out of the hands of the wind, fall exhausted upon the earth to learn from experience the treatment often accorded those who would do good. ”

“ The maddened flock flew over our heads; on they went, wildly fleeing from the north towards the south. Before they were out of sight, soft flakes were dropping gently from the skies and floating in the atmosphere.
The country through which we tramped was desolate and bleak, the mournful aspect seemed to add to the silence; only the shrill whistling of the north wind was heard. Snowflakes, like tiny butterflies, fluttered around us, whirling incessantly without touching the ground. ”

“ Snowflakes,—"flowers of the air",—as John Muir so poetically calls them. They accomplished the work. Falling alone they could have done nothing, but coming down in vast numbers, day after day, they piled up and became a power. Snow forms glaciers, and glaciers are mighty forces that create things.
Let us, if possible, stand and watch the Master Workman doing the work that is to make this region our source of present day joy. We will make the ascent and stand on the summit of Pyramid Peak. ”

“ The children would see us, and laugh with delight.”
“Why you dear little flake
Now just dry your eye,”
Said the lovely white flakes,
“We’ll go down by and by.
Just now, we would rather
Whirl ’round in the air,
Than to settle ourselves
Away off down there!”
“And just think,” said one, “of my pretty new gown,
Being stepped on, and spoiled, and all trodden down!”
Then gaily enough they were dancing away,
When the brave little flake found courage to say,
[3] ”

“ Soft and inexorable, the snow-flake does its work in silence. Touch it, and it melts. It is pure, even as the hypocrite is candid. It is by tiny particles slowly heaped one upon another that the snow-flake becomes an avalanche and the knave a criminal. ”

“ All about is the snow and the silence, and through it crawl the man and the woman, and the stranger-man who goes before. On either side the sun are sun-dogs, so that there are three suns in the sky. The frost-dust is like the dust of diamonds, and all the air is filled with it. Now the woman coughs, and lies still in the snow until the fit has passed, when she crawls on again. Now the man looks ahead, and he is blear-eyed as with old age and must rub his eyes so that he can see the stranger-man. ”

“ If they look like paradise for three months in the summer, they are a veritable inferno for the other nine; and I should like to condemn my mountain-worshipping friends to pass a whole year under the shadow of Snowdon, with that great black head of his shutting out the sunlight, staring down into their garden, overlooking all they do in the most impertinent way, sneezing and spitting at them with rain, hail, snow, and bitter freezing blasts, even in the hottest sunshine. A mountain? He is a great stupid giant, with a perpetual cold in his head, whose highest ambition is to give you one also. ”

“ When she heard the looking-glass speak thus she trembled and shook with anger.
"Snow-white shall die," cried she, "though it should cost me my own life!" And then she went to a secret lonely chamber, where no one was likely to come, and there she made a poisonous apple. It was beautiful to look upon, being white with red cheeks, so that any one who should see it must long for it, but whoever ate even a little bit of it must die. When the apple was ready she painted her face and clothed herself like a peasant woman, and went across the seven mountains to where the seven dwarfs lived. ”

“ Snow-white longed for the beautiful apple, and as she saw the peasant woman eating a piece of it she could no longer refrain, but stretched out her hand and took the poisoned half. But no sooner had she taken a morsel of it into her mouth than she fell to the earth as dead. And the queen, casting on her a terrible glance, laughed aloud and cried,
"As white as snow, as red as blood, as black as ebony! this time the dwarfs will not be able to bring you to life again."
And when she went home and asked the looking-glass,
"Looking-glass against the wall,
Who is fairest of us all?" ”

“ Them an answer back. It is more than I can bear.
The snow descends as if the dull sky shook [p. lx]
In flakes of shadow down; and through the gap
Between the ruddy schools sweeps one black rook.
The rough snowball in the playground stands huge and still
With fair flakes settling down on it.—Beyond, the town
Is lost in the shadowed silence the skies distil.
And all things are possessed by silence, and they can brood
Wrapped up in the sky’s dim space of hoarse silence
Earnestly—and oh for me this class is a bitter rood. ”

“ The other, half in charm, half in awe, listened like one spell-bound, with his fingers tingling and his eyeballs throbbing.
"This silence," said the elder, "is more freezing to me than the bitterness of the cold. The very snow-flakes are dumb; nothing makes discord but the avalanche; it is always twilight; men lie down in the snows to die, but they are numb and cannot cry." ”

“ The little spiteful flakes make the best sleighing and coasting, for they pack harder and firmer; but for fortifications, snowballing, snow statues, and snow ice cream, give me the big gentle flakes, that oftenest bring a peculiar bracing ecstatic thrill to the air, without the sting of extreme cold. ”

“ Sometimes, when the snow is drifting up the pass, and the world is blank behind, before, and all around, it seems like plunging into chaos. The muffled pines loom fantastically through the drift as we rush past them, and the wind, ever and anon, detaches great masses of snow in clouds from their bent branches. Or again at night, when the moon is shining, and the sky is full of flaming stars, and the snow, frozen to the hardness of marble, sparkles with innumerable crystals, a new sense of strangeness and of joy is given to the solitude, the swiftness, and the silence of the exercise. ”

“ The dread Spirit of the North had lain in ambush for him a long time, but it had conquered him at last.
They made an unearthly picture,—these two so silent in the drifts. Endless about them lay the snow; the winter forest was deep in its eternal silence, the little spruce trees stood patient and inert and queer, under their heavy loads of snow. Never a voice in all the wastes, never a tear of pity or a stretching hand of mercy,—only the cold, only the silence, only the dread solitude of a land untamed,—the unconquerable wild. ”

“ Not that we grieve, when, after some seven months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the handful, and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often, ere he will give up his empire, old Winter rushes fiercely back, and hurls a snow-drift at the shrinking form of Spring ”

“ On such days my spirit gets snow-blind; all things take on the same color, or no color; my thought loses its perspective; the inner world is a blank like the outer, and all my great ideals are wrapped in the same monotonous and expressionless commonplace. The blackest of black days are better.
Why does snow so kill the landscape and blot out our interest in it? Not merely because it is cold, and the symbol of death,—for I imagine as many inches of apple blossoms would have about the same effect,—but because it expresses nothing. White is a negative ”

“ What has been established as an element of good to one being may prove absolute mischief to another; even as the warmth of the parlor was proper enough for children of flesh and blood, like Violet and Peony,—though by no means very wholesome, even for them,—but involved nothing short of annihilation to the unfortunate snow-image. ”

“ But the document ought to read "Died of the weather."
Poets have sung the glory of snowy landscapes, and there is no prettier sight than the earth covered with a virgin mantle, on which the trees gleam like silver jewels. But what an abomination snow is in cities. The slush seems all the blacker for its whiteness, and the pure flakes turn into the vilest mud. Men and horses are in a purgatory. Gloom sits on every face. Pedestrians trudge along, glaring at each other with murderous eyes ”

“ Heaven snows two or three flakes together to make one inner snow-man, which we call our education; the earth melts or muddies a quarter of it, the tepid wind loosens the snow man's head off--that is our cultured inner man, such an abominable patch-work in all our knowings and willings! ”

“ He looks at the flakes as they fall, catching one after another with his eye, and following it in its meandering descent. He will, perhaps, occupy himself several minutes in silence and profound attention, in bringing fully to his mind the idea that a snow-storm consists of a mass of descending flakes of snow falling through the air. ”