The Sons assume a crown of loveliness, and the long, 

 of the dull, perspectives of monotonous roads might 

 Wind ^ e ^^ e trampled avenues about the gates of 

 fairyland ? The most sordid hamlet in the 

 dreariest manufacturing-region may, suddenly, 

 awake to a dawn so wonderful in what it 

 reveals that the villagers might well believe, as 

 in the old folk-tale, that Christ had passed that 

 way in the night and left the world white and 

 husht, stainlessly pure. But, of course, we 

 have each of us our preferences. Some love 

 best to see the long swelling reaches of ploughed 

 lands covered with new fallen snow not too 

 heavy to hide the wave-like procession of the 

 hidden furrows. Some love best to look on 

 wide interminable wolds, a solitude of unbroken 

 whiteness, without even the shadow of a cloud 

 or the half-light of a grey sky : some, upon 

 familiar pastures now changed as though in 

 the night the fields had receded into the earth 

 and the fields of another world had silently 

 sunk into their place : some, upon mountain- 

 slopes, on whose vast walls the shadows of 

 wheeling hawks and curlews pass like pale blue 

 scimetars : some, on woodlands, where from 

 the topmost elm-bough to the lowest fir-plume 

 or outspread bough of cedar the immaculate 

 soft burthens miraculously suspend. For 

 myself after the supreme loveliness of snowy 



72 



