32 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



tpioidec, woolly water, which a poor old French poet, Godeau, 

 has amplified into this: 



Lorsque la froidure inhumaine 

 De leur verd ornement depouille les forets 

 Sous une neige epaisse il couvre les guerets, 

 Et la neige a pour eux la chaleur de la laine. 



In this, as in Pope s version of the passage in Homer, there 

 is, at least, a sort of suggestion of snow-storm in the blind 

 ing drift of words. But, on the whole, if one would know 

 what snow is, I should advise him not to hunt up what the 

 poets have said about it ; but to look at the sweet miracle 

 itself. 



The preludings of Winter are as beautiful as those of 

 Spring. In a gray December day, when, as the farmers 

 say, it is too cold to snow, his numbed fingers will let fall 

 doubtfully a few star-shaped flakes, the snowdrops and ane 

 mones that harbinger his more assured reign. Now, and 

 now only, may be seen, heaped on the horizon s eastern 

 edge, those blue clouds from forth which Shakespeare 

 says that Mars doth pluck the masoned turrets. Some 

 times also, when the sun is low, you will see a single cloud 

 trailing a flurry of snow along the southern hills in a waver 

 ing fringe of purple. And when at last the real snowstorm 

 comes, it leaves the earth with a virginal look on it that no 

 other of the seasons can rival, compared with which, indeed, 

 they seem soiled and vulgar. 



And what is there in nature so beautiful as the next morn 

 ing after such confusion of the elements ? Night has no 

 silence like this of busy day. All the batteries of noise are 

 spiked. We see the movement of life as a deaf man sees 

 it, a mere wraith of the clamorous existence that inflicts 

 itself on our ears when the ground is bare. The earth is 

 clothed in innocence as a garment. Every wound of the 

 landscape is healed ; whatever was stiff has been sweetly 

 rounded as the breasts of Aphrodite ; what was unsightly 

 has been covered gently with a soft splendour, as if, Cowley 

 would have said, Nature had cleverly let fall her handker 

 chief to hide it. If the Virgin (Notre Dame de la neige) 

 were to come back, here is an earth that would not bruise 

 her foot nor stain it. It is 



The fanned snow 



That s bolted by the northern blasts twice o er, 

 Soffiata e stretta dai venti Schiavi, 

 Winnowed and packed by the Sclavonian winds,? 



