A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 41 



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 blinding 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 snow-drops 

 and anemones that harbinger his more assured reign. 

 Now, and now only, may be seen, heaped on the hori- 

 zon's eastern edge, those " blue clouds " from forth 

 which Shakespeare says that Mars " doth pluck the 

 masoned turrets." Sometimes also, when the sun is 

 low, you will see a single cloud trailing a flurry of snow 

 along the southern hills in a wavering fringe of purple. 

 And when at last the real snow-storm 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 

 morning 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 exist- 

 ence 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 Aphro- 

 dite ; what was unsightly has been covered gently with 

 a soft splendor, as if, Cowley would have said, Nature 

 had cleverly let fall her handkerchief 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. 



