[1843.]
The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with
feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a
summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The
meadow-mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat
in a hollow tree in the depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the squirrel,
and the fox have all been housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the
hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. The earth
itself has slept, as it were its first, not its last sleep, save when
some street-sign or wood-house door has faintly creaked upon its hinge,
cheering forlorn nature at her midnight work,—the only sound awake
twixt Venus and Mars,—advertising us of a remote inward warmth, a
divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are met together, but where it
is very bleak for men to stand. But while the earth has slumbered, all
the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if some
northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the
fields.
We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning.
The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the
broadened sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which
enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is
impressive. The floor creaks under our feet as we move toward the
window to look abroad through some clear space over the fields. We see
the roofs stand under their snow burden. From the eaves and fences hang
stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering some
concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on
every side; and where were walls and fences, we see fantastic forms
stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if nature
had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for
man’s art.
Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step
abroad to face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of
their sparkle, and a dull, leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid
brazen light in the east proclaims the approach of day, while the
western landscape is dim and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre
Tartarian light, like the shadowy realms. They are Infernal sounds only
that you hear,—the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the chopping
of wood, the lowing of kine, all seem to come from Pluto’s barn-yard
and beyond the Styx;—not for any melancholy they suggest, but their
twilight bustle is too solemn and mysterious for earth. The recent
tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard, remind us that each hour of
the night is crowded with events, and the primeval nature is still
working and making tracks in the snow. Opening the gate, we tread
briskly along the lone country road, crunching the dry and crisped snow
under our feet, or aroused by the sharp clear creak of the wood-sled,
just starting for the distant market, from the early farmer’s door,
where it has lain the summer long, dreaming amid the chips and stubble;
while far through the drifts and powdered windows we see the farmer’s
early candle, like a paled star, emitting a lonely beam, as if some
severe virtue were at its matins there. And one by one the smokes begin
to ascend from the chimneys amidst the trees and snows.
The sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell,
The stiffened air exploring in the dawn,
And making slow acquaintance with the day;
Delaying now upon its heavenward course,
In wreathed loiterings dallying with itself,
With as uncertain purpose and slow deed,
As its half-wakened master by the hearth,
Whose mind still slumbering and sluggish thoughts
Have not yet swept into the onward current
Of the new day;—and now it streams afar,
The while the chopper goes with step direct,
And mind intent to swing the early axe.
First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad
His early scout, his emissary, smoke,
The earliest, latest pilgrim from the roof,
To feel the frosty air, inform the day;
And while he crouches still beside the hearth,
Nor musters courage to unbar the door,
It has gone down the glen with the light wind,
And o’er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath,
Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,
And warmed the pinions of the early bird;
And now, perchance, high in the crispy air,
Has caught sight of the day o’er the earth’s edge,
And greets its master’s eye at his low door,
As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky.
We hear the sound of wood-chopping at the farmers’ doors, far over the
frozen earth, the baying of the house-dog, and the distant clarion of
the cock. Though the thin and frosty air conveys only the finer
particles of sound to our ears, with short and sweet vibrations, as the
waves subside soonest on the purest and lightest liquids, in which
gross substances sink to the bottom. They come clear and bell-like, and
from a greater distance in the horizon, as if there were fewer
impediments than in summer to make them faint and ragged. The ground is
sonorous, like seasoned wood, and even the ordinary rural sounds are
melodious, and the jingling of the ice on the trees is sweet and
liquid. There is the least possible moisture in the atmosphere, all
being dried up, or congealed, and it is of such extreme tenuity and
elasticity, that it becomes a source of delight. The withdrawn and
tense sky seems groined like the aisles of a cathedral, and the
polished air sparkles as if there were crystals of ice floating in it.
As they who have resided in Greenland tell us, that, when it freezes,
“the sea smokes like burning turf-land, and a fog or mist arises,
called frost-smoke,” which “cutting smoke frequently raises blisters on
the face and hands, and is very pernicious to the health.” But this
pure stinging cold is an elixir to the lungs, and not so much a frozen
mist, as a crystallized midsummer haze, refined and purified by cold.
The sun at length rises through the distant woods, as if with the faint
clashing swinging sound of cymbals, melting the air with his beams, and
with such rapid steps the morning travels, that already his rays are
gilding the distant western mountains. Meanwhile we step hastily along
through the powdery snow, warmed by an inward heat, enjoying an Indian
summer still, in the increased glow of thought and feeling. Probably if
our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend
ourselves against her heats and colds, but find her our constant nurse
and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds. If our bodies were fed with
pure and simple elements, and not with a stimulating and heating diet,
they would afford no more pasture for cold than a leafless twig, but
thrive like the trees, which find even winter genial to their
expansion.
The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.
Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves
of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields
and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and
bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A
cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can
withstand it but what has a virtue in it; and accordingly, whatever we
meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we
respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things
beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be
part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God
himself. It is invigorating to breathe the cleansed air. Its greater
fineness and purity are visible to the eye, and we would fain stay out
long and late, that the-gales may sigh through us, too, as through the
leafless trees, and fit us for the winter:—as if we hoped so to borrow
some pure and steadfast virtue, which will stead us in all seasons.
There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out,
and which no cold can chill. It finally melts the great snow, and in
January or July is only buried under a thicker or thinner covering. In
the coldest day it flows somewhere, and the snow melts around every
tree. This field of winter rye, which sprouted late in the fall, and
now speedily dissolves the snow, is where the fire is very thinly
covered. We feel warmed by it. In the winter, warmth stands for all
virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with its bare
stones shining in the sun, and to warm springs in the woods, with as
much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The steam which rises from swamps
and pools, is as dear and domestic as that of our own kettle. What fire
could ever equal the sunshine of a winter’s day, when the meadow mice
come out by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the defiles of the
wood? The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated from
the earth, as in summer; and when we feel his beams on our backs as we
are treading some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special
kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place.
This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the
coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer
fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A
healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter,
summer is in his heart. There is the south. Thither have all birds and
insects migrated, and around the warm springs in his breast are
gathered the robin and the lark.
At length, having reached the edge of the woods, and shut out the
gadding town, we enter within their covert as we go under the roof of a
cottage, and cross its threshold, all ceiled and banked up with snow.
They are glad and warm still, and as genial and cheery in winter as in
summer. As we stand in the midst of the pines, in the nickering and
checkered light which straggles but little way into their maze, we
wonder if the towns have ever heard their simple story. It seems to us
that no traveller has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the
wonders which science is elsewhere revealing every day, who would not
like to hear their annals? Our humble villages in the plain are their
contribution. We borrow from the forest the boards which shelter, and
the sticks which warm us. How important is their evergreen to the
winter, that portion of the summer which does not fade, the permanent
year, the unwithered grass. Thus simply, and with little expense of
altitude, is the surface of the earth diversified. What would human
life be without forests, those natural cities? From the tops of
mountains they appear like smooth shaven lawns, yet whither shall we
walk but in this taller grass?
In this glade covered with bushes of a year’s growth, see how the
silvery dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in such
infinite and luxurious forms as by their very variety atone for the
absence of color. Observe the tiny tracks of mice around every stem,
and the triangular tracks of the rabbit. A pure elastic heaven hangs
over all, as if the impurities of the summer sky, refined and shrunk by
the chaste winter’s cold, had been winnowed from the heavens upon the
earth.
Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens
seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and
distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a
Scandinavian night. 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.
“The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants.”.
The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in the remote glens,
even on the morning of the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and
Labrador, and for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians,
Novazemblaites, and Spitzbergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and
wood-chopper, the fox, musk-rat, and mink?
Still, in the midst of the arctic day, we may trace the summer to its
retreats, and sympathize with some contemporary life. Stretched over
the brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound meadows, we may observe the
submarine cottages of the caddice-worms, the larvae of the Plicipennes.
Their small cylindrical cases built around themselves, composed of
flags, sticks, grass, and withered leaves, shells, and pebbles, in form
and color like the wrecks which strew the bottom,—now drifting along
over the pebbly bottom, now whirling in tiny eddies and dashing down
steep falls, or sweeping rapidly along with the current, or else
swaying to and fro at the end of some grass-blade or root. Anon they
will leave their sunken habitations, and, crawling up the stems of
plants, or to the surface, like gnats, as perfect insects henceforth,
flutter over the surface of the water, or sacrifice their short lives
in the flame of our candles at evening. Down yonder little glen the
shrubs are drooping under their burden, and the red alder-berries
contrast with the white ground. Here are the marks of a myriad feet
which have already been abroad. The sun rises as proudly over such a
glen, as over the valley of the Seine or the Tiber, and it seems the
residence of a pure and self-subsistent valor, such as they never
witnessed; which never knew defeat nor fear. Here reign the simplicity
and purity of a primitive age, and a health and hope far remote from
towns and cities. Standing quite alone, far in the forest, while the
wind is shaking down snow from the trees, and leaving the only human
tracks behind us, we find our reflections of a richer variety than the
life of cities. The chicadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society
than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last, as
to more vulgar companions. In this lonely glen, with its brook draining
the slopes, its creased ice and crystals of all hues, where the spruces
and hemlocks stand up on either side, and the rush and sere wild oats
in the rivulet itself, our lives are more serene and worthy to
contemplate.
As the day advances, the heat of the sun is reflected by the
hill-sides, and we hear a faint but sweet music, where flows the rill
released from its fetters, and the icicles are melting on the trees;
and the nuthatch and partridge are heard and seen. The south wind melts
the snow at noon, and the bare ground appears with its withered grass
and leaves, and we are invigorated by the perfume which exhales from
it, as by the scent of strong meats.
Let us go into this deserted woodman’s hut, and see how he has passed
the long winter nights and the short and stormy days. For here man has
lived under this south hill-side, and it seems a civilized and public
spot. We have such associations as when the traveller stands by the
ruins of Palmyra or Hecatompolis. Singing birds and flowers perchance
have begun to appear here, for flowers as well as weeds follow in the
footsteps of man. These hemlocks whispered over his head, these hickory
logs were his fuel, and these pitch-pine roots kindled his fire; yonder
fuming rill in the hollow, whose thin and airy vapor still ascends as
busily as ever, though he is far off now, was his well. These hemlock
boughs, and the straw upon this raised platform, were his bed, and this
broken dish held his drink. But he has not been here this season, for
the phoebes built their nest upon this shelf last summer. I find some
embers left, as if he had but just gone out, where he baked his pot of
beans; and while at evening he smoked his pipe, whose stemless bowl
lies in the ashes, chatted with his only companion, if perchance he had
any, about the depth of the snow on the morrow, already falling fast
and thick without, or disputed whether the last sound was the screech
of an owl, or the creak of a bough, or imagination only; and through
this broad chimney throat, in the late winter evening, ere he stretched
himself upon the straw, he looked up to learn the progress of the
storm, and, seeing the bright stars of Cassiopeia’s chair shining
brightly down upon him, fell contentedly asleep. See how many traces
from which we may learn the chopper’s history. From this stump we may
guess the sharpness of his axe, and, from the slope of the stroke, on
which side he stood, and whether he cut down the tree without going
round it or changing hands; and, from the flexure of the splinters, we
may know which way it fell. This one chip contains inscribed on it the
whole history of the wood-chopper and of the world. On this scrap of
paper, which held his sugar or salt, perchance, or was the wadding of
his gun, sitting on a log in the forest, with what interest we read the
tattle of cities, of those larger huts, empty and to let, like this, in
High Streets and Broadways. The eaves are dripping on the south side of
this simple roof, while the titmouse lisps in the pine, and the genial
warmth of the sun around the door is somewhat kind and human.
After two seasons, this rude dwelling does not deform the scene.
Already the birds resort to it, to build their nests, and you may track
to its door the feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a long time, nature
overlooks the encroachment and profanity of-man. The wood still
cheerfully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that fells
it, and while they are few and seldom, they enhance its wildness, and
all the elements strive to naturalize the sound.
Now our path begins to ascend gradually to the top of this high hill,
from whose precipitous south side we can look over the broad country,
of forest and field and river, to the distant snowy mountains. See
yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some
invisible farm-house; the standard raised over some rural homestead.
There must be a warmer and more genial spot there below, as where we
detect the vapor from a spring forming a cloud above the trees. What
fine relations are established between the traveller who discovers this
airy column from some eminence in the forest, and him who sits below.
Up goes the smoke as silently and naturally as the vapor exhales from
the leaves, and as busy disposing itself in wreathes as the housewife
on the hearth below. It is a hieroglyphic of man’s life, and suggests
more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. Where its
fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human life has
planted itself,—and such is the beginning of Rome, the establishment of
the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the prairies of
America, or the steppes of Asia.
And now we descend again to the brink of this woodland lake, which lies
in a hollow of the hills, as if it were their expressed juice, and that
of the leaves, which are annually steeped in it. Without outlet or
inlet to the eye, it has still its history, in the lapse of its waves,
in the rounded pebbles on its shore, and in the pines which grow down
to its brink. It has not been idle, though sedentary, but, like Abu
Musa, teaches that “sitting still at home is the heavenly way; the
going out is the way of the world.” Yet in its evaporation it travels
as far as any. In summer it is the earth’s liquid eye; a mirror in the
breast of nature. The sins of the wood are washed out in it. See how
the woods form an amphitheatre about it, and it is an arena for all the
genialness of nature. All trees direct the traveller to its brink, all
paths seek it out, birds fly to it, quadrupeds flee to it, and the very
ground inclines toward it. It is nature’s saloon, where she has sat
down to her toilet. Consider her silent economy and tidiness; how the
sun comes with his evaporation to sweep the dust from its surface each
morning, and a fresh surface is constantly welling up; and annually,
after whatever impurities have accumulated herein, its liquid
transparency appears again in the spring. In summer a hushed music
seems to sweep across its surface. But now a plain sheet of snow
conceals it from our eyes, except where the wind has swept the ice
bare, and the sere leaves are gliding from side to side, tacking and
veering on their tiny voyages. Here is one just keeled up against a
pebble on shove, a dry beech-leaf, rocking still, as if it would start
again. A skilful engineer, methinks, might project its course since it
fell from the parent stem. Here are all the elements for such a
calculation. Its present position, the direction of the wind, the level
of the pond, and how much more is given. In its scarred edges and veins
is its log rolled up.
We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger house. The surface of
the pond is our deal table or sanded floor, and the woods rise abruptly
from its edge, like the walls of a cottage. The lines set to catch
pickerel through the ice look like a larger culinary preparation, and
the men stand about on the white ground like pieces of forest
furniture. The actions of these men, at the distance of half a mile
over the ice and snow, impress us as when we read the exploits of
Alexander in history. They seem not unworthy of the scenery, and as
momentous as the conquest of kingdoms.
Again we have wandered through the arches of the wood, until from its
skirts we hear the distant booming of ice from yonder bay of the river,
as if it were moved by some other and subtler tide than oceans know. To
me it has a strange sound of home, thrilling as the voice of one’s
distant and noble kindred. A mild summer sun shines over forest and
lake, and though there is but one green leaf for many rods, yet nature
enjoys a serene health. Every sound is fraught with the same mysterious
assurance of health, as well now the creaking of the boughs in January,
as the soft sough of the wind in July.
When Winter fringes every bough
With his fantastic wreath,
And puts the seal of silence now
Upon the leaves beneath;
When every stream in its pent-house
Goes gurgling on its way,
And in his gallery the mouse
Nibbleth the meadow hay;
Methinks the summer still is nigh,
And lurketh underneath,
As that same meadow-mouse doth lie
Snug in that last year’s heath.
And if perchance the chicadee
Lisp a faint note anon,
The snow is summer’s canopy,
Which she herself put on.
Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees,
And dazzling fruits depend,
The north wind sighs a summer breeze,
The nipping frosts to fend,
Bringing glad tidings unto me,
The while I stand all ear,
Of a serene eternity,
Which need not winter fear.
Out on the silent pond straightway
The restless ice doth crack,
And pond sprites merry gambols play
Amid the deafening rack.
Eager I hasten to the vale,
As if I heard brave news,
How nature held high festival,
Which it were hard to lose.
I gambol with my neighbor ice,
And sympathizing quake,
As each new crack darts in a trice
Across the gladsome lake.
One with the cricket in the ground,
And fagot on the hearth,
Resounds the rare domestic sound
Along the forest path.
Before night we will take a journey on skates along the course of this
meandering river, as full of novelty to one who sits by the cottage
fire all the winter’s day, as if it were over the polar ice, with
Captain Parry or Franklin; following the winding of the stream, now
flowing amid hills, now spreading out into fair meadows, and forming a
myriad coves and bays where the pine and hemlock overarch. The river
flows in the rear of the towns, and we see all things from a new and
wilder side. The fields and gardens come down to it with a frankness,
and freedom from pretension, which they do not wear on the highway. It
is the outside and edge of the earth. Our eyes are not offended by
violent contrasts. The last rail of the farmer’s fence is some swaying
willow bough, which still preserves its freshness, and here at length
all fences stop, and we no longer cross any road. We may go far up
within the country now by the most retired and level road, never
climbing a hill, but by broad levels ascending to the upland meadows.
It is a beautiful illustration of the law of obedience, the flow of a
river; the path for a sick man, a highway down which an acorn cup may
float secure with its freight. Its slight occasional falls, whose
precipices would not diversify the landscape, are celebrated by mist
and spray, and attract the traveller from far and near. From the remote
interior, its current conducts him by broad and easy steps, or by one
gentle inclined plane, to the sea. Thus by an early and constant
yielding to the inequalities of the ground, it secures itself the
easiest passage.
No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times, and now we
draw near to the empire of the fishes. Our feet glide swiftly over
unfathomed depths, where in summer our line tempted the pout and perch,
and where the stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors formed by
the bulrushes. The deep, impenetrable marsh, where the heron waded, and
bittern squatted, is made pervious to our swift shoes, as if a thousand
railroads had been made into it. With one impulse we are carried to the
cabin of the musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see him dart away
under the transparent ice, like a furred fish, to his hole in the bank;
and we glide rapidly over meadows where lately “the mower whet his
scythe,” through beds of frozen cranberries mixed with meadow grass. We
skate near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the kingbird hung
their nests over the water, and the hornets builded from the maple in
the swamp. How many gay warblers following the sun, have radiated from
this nest of silver-birch and thistledown. On the swamp’s outer edge
was hung the supermarine village, where no foot penetrated. In this
hollow tree the wood-duck reared her brood, and slid away each day to
forage in yonder fen.
In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried specimens,
in their natural order and position. The meadows and forests are a
_hortus siccus_. The leaves and grasses stand perfectly pressed by the
air without screw or gum, and the birds’ nests are not hung on an
artificial twig, but where they builded them. We go about dryshod to
inspect the summer’s work in the rank swamp, and see what a growth have
got the alders, the willows, and the maples; testifying to how many
warm suns, and fertilizing dews and showers. See what strides their
boughs took in the luxuriant summer,—and anon these dormant buds will
carry them onward and upward another span into the heavens.
Occasionally we wade through fields of snow, under whose depths the
river is lost for many rods, to appear again to the right or left,
where we least expected; still holding on its way underneath, with a
faint, stertorous, rumbling sound, as if, like the bear and marmot, it
too had hibernated, and we had followed its faint summer-trail to where
it earthed itself in snow and ice. At first we should have thought that
rivers would be empty and dry in midwinter, or else frozen solid till
the spring thawed them; but their volume is not diminished even, for
only a superficial cold bridges their surface. The thousand springs
which feed the lakes and streams are flowing still. The issues of a few
surface springs only are closed, and they go to swell the deep
reservoirs. Nature’s wells are below the frost. The summer brooks are
not filled with snow-water, nor does the mower quench his thirst with
that alone. The streams are swollen when the snow melts in the spring,
because nature’s work has been delayed, the water being turned into ice
and snow, whose particles are less smooth and round, and do not find
their level so soon.
Far over the ice, between the hemlock woods and snow-clad hills, stands
the pickerel fisher, his lines set in some retired cove, like a
Finlander, with his arms thrust into the pouches of his dreadnought;
with dull, snowy, fishy thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated a
few inches from his race; dumb, erect, and made to be enveloped in
clouds and snows, like the pines on shore. In these wild scenes, men
stand about in the scenery, or move deliberately and heavily, having
sacrificed the sprightliness and vivacity of towns to the dumb sobriety
of nature. He does not make the scenery less wild, more than the jays
and musk-rats, but stands there as a part of it, as the natives are
represented in the voyages of early navigators, at Nootka Sound, and on
the Northwest coast, with their furs about them, before they were
tempted to loquacity by a scrap of iron. He belongs to the natural
family of man, and is planted deeper in nature and has more root than
the inhabitants of towns. Go to him, ask what luck, and you will learn
that he too is a worshipper of the unseen. Hear with what sincere
deference and waving gesture in his tone, he speaks of the lake
pickerel, which he has never seen, his primitive and ideal race of
pickerel. He is connected with the shore still, as by a fish-line, and
yet remembers the season when he took fish through the ice on the pond,
while the peas were up in his garden at home.
But now, while we have loitered, the clouds have gathered again, and a
few straggling snow-flakes are beginning to descend. Faster and faster
they fall, shutting out the distant objects from sight. The snow falls
on every wood and field, and no crevice is forgotten; by the river and
the pond, on the hill and in the valley. Quadrupeds are confined to
their coverts, and the birds sit upon their perches this peaceful hour.
There is not so much sound as in fair weather, but silently and
gradually every slope, and the gray walls and fences, and the polished
ice, and the sere leaves, which were not buried before, are concealed,
and the tracks of men and beasts are lost. With so little effort does
nature reassert her rule and blot out the traces of men. Hear how Homer
has described the same. “The snow-flakes fall thick and fast on a
winter’s day. The winds are lulled, and the snow falls incessant,
covering the tops of the mountains, and the hills, and the plains where
the lotus-tree grows, and the cultivated fields, and they are falling
by the inlets and shores of the foaming sea, but are silently dissolved
by the waves.” The snow levels all things, and infolds them deeper in
the bosom of nature, as, in the slow summer, vegetation creeps up to
the entablature of the temple, and the turrets of the castle, and helps
her to prevail over art.
The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace
our steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and
birds seek their roosts, and cattle their stalls.
“Drooping the lab’rer ox
Stands covered o’er with snow, and _now_ demands
The fruit of all his toil.”
Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the
wind and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him
as a merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as summer.
The unexplored grandeur of the storm keeps up the spirits of the
traveller. It does not trifle with us, but has a sweet earnestness. In
winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like
cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but
from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The imprisoning
drifts increase the sense of comfort which the house affords, and in
the coldest days we are content to sit over the hearth and see the sky
through the chimney top, enjoying the quiet and serene life that may be
had in a warm corner by the chimney side, or feeling our pulse by
listening to the low of cattle in the street, or the sound of the flail
in distant barns all the long afternoon. No doubt a skilful physician
could determine our health by observing how these simple and natural
sounds affected us. We enjoy now, not an oriental, but a boreal
leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the shadow of
motes in the sunbeams.
Sometimes our fate grows too homely and familiarly serious ever to be
cruel. Consider how for three months the human destiny is wrapped in
furs. The good Hebrew Revelation takes no cognizance of all this
cheerful snow. Is there no religion for the temperate and frigid zones?
We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on
a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only
their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a
meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave devout
man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the
Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience,
from the setting in of winter to the breaking up of the ice.
Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer’s hearth, when
the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by nature
and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is the happy
resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and thinks of his
preparedness for winter, and, through the glittering panes, sees with
equanimity “the mansion of the northern bear,” for now the storm is
over,
“The full ethereal round,
Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines out intensely keen; and all one cope
Of starry glitter glows from pole to pole.”