AT THE TURN OF THE YEAR 



WHEN one hears of 'the dead months,' of 

 'dead December' and 'bleak January,' the 

 best corrective is to be found in the coppice 

 or by the stream-side, by the field-thicket, in 

 the glens, and even on the wide moors if the 

 snow is not everywhere fallen, a coverlet so 

 dense and wide that even the juniper has not 

 a green spike to show, or the dauntless bunting 

 a clean whin -branch to call from on the 

 broomieknowe. Even the common sayings 

 reveal a knowledge hidden from those to whom 

 winter is ' a dead season . . . and it is a 

 continual surprise to find how many people 

 believe that from the fall of the leaf or the 

 first sleet and snow, till the thrush doubles and 

 trebles his note in the February wet-shine, 

 that bird and insect and all green life have 

 gone, that all Nature is dead or asleep. Thus, 

 for example, 'as keen in the hearing as a 

 winter-plover ' must have been uttered, when 



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