THE FAERY YEAR 



Meanwhile, at sundown, February grown for- 

 bidding will sometimes show sky and landscapes 

 with the feel about them more of winter than spring. 

 Such a scene is when a full moon rises into a sky 

 which has not yet had time to catch any of the 

 warming flame of the west. It is winter to the 

 human sense indeed when a large yellow moon, 

 seeming strangely near as on a misted night in the 

 hills amber Arcturus or diamond blue Sirius will 

 sometimes look lies just above the horizon among 

 sinister banks of leaden cloud ; and as the light 

 thickens the green of the stern pines against the sky 

 is the darkest shade of green imaginable. But 

 most wintry of all at this hour and scene is the 

 red-brown expanse of rough park grass among the 

 grey oaks. 



Another hour and the earth will be in mono- 

 chrome, with the dead grass, about which there is 

 always such a hopeless look of winter, quite undis- 

 tinguishable. The dark of the night is never so 

 wintry as the duns and greys of the day, even of the 

 brilliant sunshine. Then, too, Venus, after dark, 

 still waxes in splendour, tarrying longer and longer 

 in the sky, and giving a suggestion of summer 

 richness to February nights. 



