Winter

“ Winter is following their track, and marching steadily toward us. The spent flowers, the seared leaves, the thinning tree-tops, the morning frost, have borne witness of a change on earth; and these caravans of the upper air confirm the tidings. Summer is gone; winter is coming! ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were none of those signs in the animal world outside, of premature stir and cheerful awaking, that in other lands help the illusion that winter lies behind, but there was that even more stimulating sweet air abroad, that subtle mixture of sun and yielding frost, that softened wind that comes blowing across the snow, still keen to the cheek, but subtly reviving to the sensitive nostril, and caressing to the eyes. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The winter is an arctic summer.
How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred life which still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and woods covered with frost and snow, sees the sun rise! ”

“ Even in the summer these enormous quantities of ice and snow produce a local winter, all the more curious from the contrast, for side by side with the gloomy glacier, with its great gaping crevices, its collection of stones, its terrible silence, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and fruit ripens. It is like death and life. ”

“ Winter brightened into spring, with all its varieties of good and evil; east winds rushing round street-corners, and cutting into the pedestrian like a knife; west winds enfolding him like a balmy caress, and bringing the perfume of violets, the vivid yellow of daffodils into the wilderness of brick and stone; rainy days, grey, monotonous, dismal, hanging on the soul like a curtain of gloom and hopelessness. ”

“ The combination of this delicious air, which you do not want to be warmer or softer, with the presence of ice and snow, you sitting on the bare russet portions, the south hillsides of the earth,—this is the charm of these days. It is the summer beginning to show itself, like an old friend, in the midst of winter. ”

“ So the winter slipped away very gradually, for even after the first breath of spring, which comes to us from afar and thrills us as no other fragrance of air, frost, snow, rain and biting winds triumph again, and bud and sprouting green seem to shrink up and cower away. ”

“ It was the latter part of winter, that period into which, among snowstorms and gray, cold days, the approaching spring projects sometimes, as a forerunner, a warm and luminous day, or even a single hour, so passionately young and sparkling that the sparrows in the street become mad with joy and men seem intoxicated. ”

“ All is life and motion and joy, for the winter is past, and nothing remains of it save the snow-peaks on some distant mountains, and even they are glowing in brilliant contrast with the deep blue sky beyond them.
Lovely as the valley is in summer or autumn, it is only in spring its perfect beauty appears. The sudden burst of vegetation—the rapid transition from the frost-bound durance of winter to the life and lightness of the young season, have a most exciting and exhilarating effect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Winter is staid and dignified and grand with its stark trees and mantle of brown earth, and summer is glowing and glorious; but very young spring is so sappy and curly and yellow and green and lavender that you take it to heart and let it nestle there to suck its pink apple-blow thumb, and curl up its young sprout toes sheltered away from the cold that sets it back and the sun that forces it to break bud. ”

“ Spring with her balmy air, soft refreshing showers, green fields, fragrant flowers, and merry cheerful birds; Summer, with her sultry days, her cool inviting shades, her waving fields, and delicious fruits; and Autumn, with his rich golden harvest, bright pensive dreamy days, and clear moonlight evenings, have power to rouse the minstrel from her slumbers; and even rude old Winter, clothed in clouds and storms and drifting snows, can with his icy fingers sweep her silent harp strings and wake their wildest melody. ”

“ The snows of winter, like a winding sheet, lie coldly above them, and as each returning spring awakens into life and beauty the sleeping forces of nature, the green grass grows and the wild flowers bloom above their common grave. ”

“ But in winter, matters were different. All the laughing lips of ripples, all the white tossing crests of waves, must content themselves with the ice-bound rocks, till spring should bring them their child-comrade again ”

“ White winter had come with the cruel stillness of unclouded frosts, the thick-lying, crunching snow, the rosy rime on the trees, the pale emerald sky, the wreaths of smoke above the chimneys, the clouds of steam rushing out of the doors when they are opened for an instant, with the fresh faces, that look stung by the cold, and the hurrying trot of the chilled horses. ”

“ In winter come the storms, and the great winds blow, but then will follow spring in all its beauty, adorning hill and plain with perfumed plants and red anemones, fair to see. Then will the birds trill out upon the branches their songs of joy, and sermonize in lilting tones from the pulpits of the trees. ”

“ The snow is wet like your eyes at parting, cold as the promise of a winter dawn wet again as city-streets I must tread to make a living, the flask of wine pressed to my lips. On the winter landscape all I see is the ghost white of sheets, our sheets wrapped to keep breath warm the log cannisters of our bed a heady raft upon which to travel to burn up an ocean of delight. ”

“ Now winter's here and rivers freeze;
As I walk out I see the trees,
Wherein the pretty squirrels sleep,
All standing in the snow so deep:
And every twig, however small,
Is blossomed white and beautiful. ”

“ To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, no wind, and the warmth must come directly from the sun. It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant, if bare. You hear the lisping music of chickadees from time to time, and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold, hard, tense, frozen music like the winter sky itself. ”

“ Spring comes soberly, inaudibly as it were, in these temperate European lands, where the grass holds its green all winter, and the foliage of ivy, laurel, holly, and countless other evergreen shrubs, links the lifeless to the living months. ”

“ Winter means that the minstrelsy of the birds is gone, and that the field and forest, so lately cheered by a thousand forms and sounds of happy existence are now silent, or rendered more dreary and desolate by the moaning winds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The snows of winter melt for weeks, the cold winds blow and the cool rains fall, and we see no change until, almost within a few days, the leaves and blossoms put forth their verdure, and the spring has come. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ In winter, the leaves fall from the trees, snow covers the ground, frost stiffens the clay, and chills the bodies of men, till they shiver in pain—the whole country looks as though the earth were dead. ”

“ 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? ”

“ And autumn takes his turn to reign,
I know as sure as I’m a sinner,
When leaves are scattered o’er the plain,
And grapes are eaten after dinner.
WINTER
Winter is known by frost and snow,
To all the little girls and boys ”

“ The wind is more southerly, and now the warmth of the sun prevails and is felt on the back. The snow softens and melts. It is a beautiful, clear, and mild winter day. . . . But I do not melt. There is no thaw in me. I am bound out still.—I see the tree sparrows one or two at a time now and then all winter uttering a faint note, with their bright chestnut crown, and spot on breast, and barred wings. They represent the sparrows in winter. . . .
In winter when there are no flowers, and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a budding like a partridge. ”

“ Though I like the early summer best, yet I can admire the clear winter sky, and the dazzling expanse of white that robes the whole earth as if in ermine, and even the autumnal storm with its fierce blast, loaded with sleet, and hail, and withered leaves. ”

“ Will shine where I fasten stove, furnace or grate.
The Summer leaves now whirling fast from the trees,
By Autumn's chill blast are tossed yellow and sere;
And soon, with the breath of his nostrils to freeze
Each thing he can puff at, will Winter be here! ”

“ The dews of spring fall, summer's vapours fade away, and it is the pure atmosphere of autumn which clearly reveals the distant landscape, and then finally earthly existence is swallowed in the night of winter. ”

“ Once upon a time the winter season lasted for so many many months that the people began to wonder if the frozen rivers and deep snows would ever melt. "Will the keen north wind never leave us?" they asked each other anxiously. "What has become of the beautiful warm summer?" ”

“ If the winter was snowy, frosty and stormy, it had in its place sufficient enjoyments to make us love it; but now that it has passed, budding spring, with its ever-present deep green, comes to us with a bound, with a new pleasure of anticipation, added to its reality after it is once here. ”

“ Then comes the advocate of winter, who says, “You should see the loads of snow, falling almost perpendicularly in thick, heavy flakes, or whirled about by the wild wind; on the calming of the snow-storm, you should see the heavy brown clouds in the south assume a tinge more and more golden and bright, till the first patch of blue sky bursts forth amidst the gigantic masses, and at last permits the winter sun, far down in the south, to gladden the earth with a brief sight of the source of light and life;” ”

“ For I had learned from many an autumn
The way a leaf can drift and go,
Lightly, lightly, almost gay
Taking the unreturning way
To mix with winter and the snow.
81
Winter
I shall have winter now and lessening days,
Lit by a smoky sun with slanting rays,
And after falling leaves, the first determined frost.
The colors of the world will all be lost. ”

“ There are warm, foggy days in winter which excite us.—It reminds me, this thick, spring-like weather, that I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies. ”

“ Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. ”

“ What can exceed the dazzling splendour of a rising sun, on the trees and bushes, after a night of rain and freezing, when every branch appears like a shining crystal? A prospect grand indeed!
The severe frosts of Winter, with the agitated atmosphere, dispel the sickening fumes which arise from heated and stagnant pools, and decaying vegetation.
This gives health and vigour to the body, and an it were, new spring to thought. Who but has observed the lively sensations of body and mind on a clear frosty morning in winter? ”

“ We have spoken about signs. By times, we understand the succession of seasons, winter, spring, summer and autumn, which we see follow each other in so regular a course, thanks to the regularity of the movement of the luminaries. It is winter when the sun sojourns in the south and produces in abundance the shades of night in our region. The air spread over the earth is chilly, and the damp exhalations, which gather over our heads, give rise to rains, to frosts, to innumerable flakes of snow. ”