208 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



gathered round him all the clouds of night, and sailed across the sky 

 unseen. 



Some have thought him feeble, and so have pictured him : 



" Pale, rugged Winter bending o'er his tread, 

 His grizzled hair bedropped with icy dew ; 

 His eyes, a dusky light, congeal'd and dead. 

 His robe, a tinge of light ethereal blue! 



" His train, a motley'd, sanguine, sable cloud, 

 He limps along the russet dreary moor ; 

 While rising whirlwinds, blasting, keen, and loud, 

 Roll the white surges to the sounding shore." 



Chattekton. 



But in the angry strife of storm and darkness, and the withering 

 chill in which the earth lies dead, his mighty potency is felt and seen 

 The birds knew it, and they fled ; the flowers knew it, and they died 

 from fear. 



Though all within the solemn hall of winter has a grand and terrible 

 magnificence, the threshold by which it is approached is of a dreary 

 and forbidding aspect. The flowers vanish from the gardens one by 

 one, leaving behind them withered stalks and blanching seedpods ; 

 the hedges become bare and desolate ; the ragwort and the golden rod 

 perish in a dying embrace ; the bramble ripens, and lets fall its 

 last fruit ; the forget-me-not and the willow herb sink into the stream 

 for ever ; the snap-dragon, and the spurrey, and the charlock, are 

 all torn from their homes together by a midnight storm ; and the sky, 

 looking down upon the earth, and seeing rags where beauty was before, 

 sends down its mighty floods to wash away those symbols of disgrace. 

 Then the streams foam and dash in headlong fury, and hasten 

 onward under blinding rain to sink for ever in the stormy sea ; the 

 leaves gather into dark hollows, and dreary places, and are glad 

 to find themselves a grave ; the twitter of the swallows comes no more 

 between the gusts, as in the days of spring ; the clouds hurry to and 

 fro upon the blackened sky, bewildered with the roar of winds and 

 waters, wandering homeless, and in tears, to mingle at last with the 

 giant shadows round the grave of nature. 



The silence of mid- winter makes the desolation of the woods more 

 melancholy and ghost-like ; for the birds and the little children — 'the 

 only things besides angels which sing, as John Bunyan says — having 



