52 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



To hang, like twinkling winter lamps, 

 Among the branches of the leafless trees," 



or, if you are on a hill-top (whence it is sweet to watch 

 the home-lights gleam out one by one), they look nearer 

 than in summer, and appear to take a conscious part in 

 the cold. Especially in one of those stand-stills of the 

 air that forebode a change of weather, the sky is dusted 

 with motes of fire of which the summer-watcher never 

 dreamed. Winter, too, is, on the whole, the triumphant 

 season of the moon, a moon devoid of sentiment, if you 

 choose, but with the refreshment of a purer intellectual 

 light, the cooler orb of middle life. Who ever saw 

 anything to match that gleam, rather divined than seen, 

 which runs before her over the snow, a breath of light, 

 as she rises on the infinite silence of winter night ? High 

 in the heavens, also she seems to bring out some intenser 

 property of cold with her chilly polish. The poets have 

 instinctively noted this. When Goody Blake imprecates 

 a curse of perpetual chill upon Harry Gill, she has 



" The cold, cold moon above her head " ; 

 and Coleridge speaks of 



" The silent icicles, 

 Quietly gleaming to the quiet moon."" 



As you walk homeward, for it is time that we should 

 end our ramble, you may perchance hear the most 

 impressive sound in nature, unless it be the fall of a tree 

 in the forest during the hush of summer noon. It is the 

 stifled shriek of the lake yonder as the frost throttles it. 

 Wordsworth has described it (too much, I fear, in the 

 style of Dr. Armstrong) : 



" And, interrupting oft that eager game, 

 From under Esthwaite's splitting fields of ice, 

 The pent-up air, struggling to free itself, 

 Gave out to meadow-grounds and hills a loud 

 Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves 

 Howling in troops along the Bothnia main." 



