Yearling

“ I heard the New Year whisper, passing by,
"I am the Old Year, and did never die.
"As phenix bird, that from the sunset springs,
Next in the East replumes his wondrous wings,
"As dewdrop trembling in the morning flower,
Exhaled ere noon, returns at evening hour,
"So never lost was I, though steeple chime
Hurl out my knell—for I, behold, am Time!
"The Years but lend so many a quaint disguise
Wherein I masquerade to mortal eyes." ”

“ The first day or year of the cycle is Ki no E, Ne, "Wood—Elder Brother, Rat;" the second is Ki no To, Ushi, "Wood—Younger Brother, Bull;" and so on, until the sixtieth, Mizu no To, I, "Water—Younger Brother, Boar," is reached, and the cycle begins again.
These things, especially the lunar calendar, still largely influence the daily actions of the people. The peasantry scrupulously observe the traditional times and seasons in all the operations of agriculture. ”

“ Someone always does it twice a year: on the 25th September and the 25th March. I’ve done it now without a break for ten years, until it has got to be a sort of religion with me, and the whole thing’s as real as if King George and John York were talking. As I tramp to the point or swing away back, in summer barefooted, in winter on my snowshoes, to myself I seem to be John York on the trail of the king’s bugles. ”

“ It was the height of such a June as the old century could produce up to the last. The bald red houses, too young to show a shoot of creeper, or a mellow tone from doorstep to chimney-pot, glowed like clowns' pokers in the ruthless sun. The shade of some stately elms, on a bit of old road between the two new ones of the Estate, appealed sharply to my awakened sense of contrast. ”

“ It has, however, often been felt by us, that not a few of those one meets with in the lamentations of whey-faced sentimentalists, are false or fantastic, and do equal violence to all the seasons, both of the year and of life. These gentry have been especially silly upon the similitude of Old Age to Winter. Winter, in external nature, is not the season of decay. An old tree, for example, in the very dead of winter, as it is figuratively called, though bare of leaves, is full of life. The sap, indeed, has sunk down from his bole and branches—down into his toes or roots. ”

“ The beginning of the year in our sense is the starting-point of the series of the days of the calendar; among the primitive peoples it is the beginning of any year, whether the complete year or the phenomena of the time of vegetation only. There are several such phenomena appearing side by side, so that there can also be several beginnings to the year, e. g. several feasts of first-fruits, as among the Thonga, the rising of the Pleiades and the feast of the first-fruits among the Amazulu. ”

“ Winter has December, January, and February to cover the earth with snow, to freeze the rivers, and to paint curious pictures upon the windowpanes.
Can you compare the passing of the year and the life of man? Childhood, the springtime of life, is the time for play and dance and merry song, the time to make the body supple and strong. When the body is strong and the mind has been trained, comes the summer time of work—hard work in all the fields of labor, that the harvest may not fail. ”

“ Now, it was the last night of the old year—George was about twelve years of age, and, because he was their first-born, and, moreover, because he was a genius, he was permitted to sit with his father and his mother, and a few friends, who had come to visit them, to see the old year out, and the New Year in. The cuckoo clock struck twelve, and the company rose, shook hands, wished each other a happy new year, and, in a bumper, drank, "May the year that's awa be the warst o' our lives."
"I wonder wha will be our first-foot," said Nelly; "I hope it will be a lucky ane." ”

“ And thus it has come about that during the August now ended—always the month of the year in which my nature will go its solitary way and seek its woodland peace—I have hung about the town as one who is offered for hire to a master whom he has never seen and for a work that he hates to do. Many of the affairs that engage the passions of my fellow-beings are to me as the gray stubble through which I walk in the September fields—the rotting wastage of harvests long since gathered in. ”

“ When the sun shone too hot, The Good Year shook his hour-glass till showers came, and there was no burning drought as in the bad years before. In the autumn, when everything from all the fields and orchards was gathered, and the village folk trimmed the church for the harvest festival, never were seen such golden sheaves or such red-cheeked apples; and everybody thanked the good God for sending them such a wonderful year. And not only was there plenty for the village, but plenty for the forest creatures, too ”

“ And in the spring of the year, when the humours that have been locked up begin to flow to the hazard of the body, then for two whole months you exercise your tyranny and corrupt the infancy of the springing year, by bringing an old age upon it. ”

“ Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the warmth of life. The old year—say what the chronologists will—lingers upon the very lap of spring, and is only fairly gone when the blossoms of April have strown their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the bluebirds have chanted his requiem. ”

“ If we simply continue to reckon the days according to our present arrangement of the year, calling each fourth year a leap-year of 366 days, and assign to each hundredth year 365 days—although it ought to be a leap-year, according to the four-year cycle—and again to each four hundredth year 366 days, we shall be certain to remain for thousands of years in such agreement with the sun that we do not need to concern ourselves in the least in the times of his revolution and positions in the heavens. ”

“ I can count upon these small screech owls by February,—the forlorn month, the seasonless, hopeless, lifeless month of the year, but for its owls, its thaws, its lengthening days, its cackling pullets, its possible bluebirds, and its being the year’s end! At least the ancients called February, not December, the year’s end, maintaining, with some sense, that the making of the world was begun in March, that is, with the spring. The owls do not, like the swallows, bring the spring, but they nevertheless help winter with most seemly haste into an early grave. ”

“ In the year that’s come and gone, dear, we wove a tether
All of gracious words and thoughts, binding two together.
In the year that’s coming on with its wealth of roses
We shall weave it stronger, yet, ere the circle closes.
p. 145In the year that’s come and gone, in the golden weather,
Sweet, my sweet, we swore to keep the watch of life together.
In the year that’s coming on, rich in joy and sorrow,
We shall light our lamp, and wait life’s mysterious morrow. ”

“ Then they are careful to select young persons, though not one in twenty can tell year, month, or day. Speaking of births,—it is the time of "corn-planting," "corn-husking," "Christmas," "New Year," "Easter," "the Fourth of July," or some similar indefinite date. My own time of birth was no more exact; so that to this day I am uncertain how old I am.
About the time of the conversation last narrated, Jefferson Dorsey, a planter near by, had a butchering. One of Dorsey's men met me, and said that they wanted more help, and that Master Mack said I might go and lend a hand. ”

“ Only through their union does the complete year arise. Every natural year however offers on the whole the same phenomena following one another in definite succession, and thus the circle of the year has its prototype in Nature herself. Nevertheless the uniting of the different seasons into a complete year only takes place gradually by means of a selection, systematising, and regulation of the seasons. It must be carried out according to a principle—we shall see that this is as a rule the lunar reckoning—but the occupations of agriculture also serve as a handle. ”

“ In place of the bright and joyous Easter which every one had expected, came a cold, inclement season, which would have seemed like Christmas but for the opening buds, and the primroses and violets, which smiled in the face of the cold wind, as if confident that its triumph would be of short duration, and sunshine and beauty would conquer in the end. ”

“ The seasons of the year are the turning-points of their lives, rather than their age, so that when these seasons change they change with them by growing and losing feathers, hairs, or leaves respectively. But the winter and summer, spring and autumn of man are defined by his age, so that, since his ages do not return, neither do the conditions caused by them return, although the cause of the change of condition is similar in man to what it is in the animals and plants in question. ”

“ Year—If the civil year correspond with the solar the seasons of the year will always come at the same period. But if the civil year is supposed to be too long (as is the case in the Julian year) the seasons will go back proportionately; but if too short they will advance in the same proportion. Now, as the ancient Egyptians reckoned thirty days to the month invariably, and to complete the year, added five days, called supplementary days, their year consisted of 365 days. ”

“ Not a child in the world will hang up his stocking at the right time."
"Didn't you know," sobbed April, "that the jar only held just enough to make us complete, and no more? And here all of us but January are ugly, maimed creatures, and the New Year will be so disgusted with us." ”

“ Whether the conception of the year was known in the Indo-European period is not certain: it is however significant that all the words for ‘year’ of which the etymology is fairly certain either refer to the produce of the year—as ὥρα and its cognates, and also the word ‘year’ itself, Old Scand. ár—or else come from the pars pro toto counting of the year. Thus the Slavonic leto means ‘summer’ and ‘year’. Sanskrit çarad means ‘autumn’: that the corresponding Avestic sared means ‘year’ is explained by the fact that the years were reckoned in autumns. ”

“ The word ‘year’ may however also represent the highest chronological unit even independently of the seasons, as in the case of the Egyptian shifting year of exactly 365 days, and the Islamite lunar year of 354. These however are exceptional cases. At the basis lies the natural year conditioned by the course of the sun and by the natural phases dependent thereon, which penetrate closely into the life of man. ”

“ Time went swiftly. The seasons followed each other without that fierceness in them to which one is accustomed in the North. The very frosts were gentle; slowly and kindly they stripped the green robes from tree and thicket, gave ample warning to the robin, linnet and ruby-throat before taking down the leafy hangings and leaving their shelter open to the chill rains of December. The wet kine and horses turned away from the North and stood in slanting rains with bowed heads. ”

“ POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. ”

“ I went through the ordeal each morning with an indifference and abstraction born of long custom.
The time of the year was January, the year itself 1892. A clear, cold air with just enough frost in it to stir sluggish blood, induced one to walk briskly. ”

“ The village folk all said, 'See, what a wonderful year for fruit!' Then one day, when The Good Year was off attending to matters in a distant part of the world, along came Jack Frost meaning to play an evil trick. ”

“ With the leaping trout and the gleam of the daffodils. APRIL
BA. Then laugheth the year; with flowers the meads are bright;
The bursting branches are tipped with flames of light:
The landscape is light; the dark clouds flee above,
And the shades of the land are a blue that is deep as love. MAY
ED. But if you have seen a village all red and old
In cherry-orchards a-sprinkle with white and gold,
By a hawthorn seated, or a witchelm flowering high,
A gay breeze making riot in the waving rye! JUNE
BA. Then night retires from heaven ”

“ The year was growing to be an old man. It looked back at spring, at the early days when it first felt the promises of life's glory and scarcely dared believe them true, at laughing May, at wide and spacious June, and then the turning of the year. ”

“ The sixtieth year is our grand climacteric, after which a man must be prepared for death at any moment; but this age is treated as one for congratulation and never for sorrow or anxiety, because it completes our cycle of years. To each year is assigned an element of nature, namely, wood, fire, earth, metal, or water, each of which is divided into two kinds, elder and younger, so that there are practically ten elemental signs by which the years are successively designated. ”

“ CHAPTER XLI. THE THUNDER-STORM.
The fine September morning had turned to a rainy afternoon. A heavy mist hung upon the trees, the hedges, the ground; something like the mist which had fallen upon Lionel Verner’s spirit. The day had grown more like a November one: the clouds were leaden-coloured, the rain fell; even the little birds sought the shelter of their nests.
One there was who walked in it, his head uncovered, his brow bared. Not a bird, but a man. ”