WINTER 



MEMORIES 



BEFORE the lamps are lighted on a Winter night, 

 while yet the distant woods are visible in the last 

 streaks of daylight, and the blackening train of crows 

 are hurrying to cold perches on the oaks, when a 

 breeze that is herald of storm begins to moan in the 

 shrubbery and about the chimney stacks, and when 

 one is wearied with out-of-door exercise, the blazing 

 fire and its shadows offer a pressing invitation 



To muse and brood and live again in memory 



With those old faces of our infancy 



Heaped over with a mound of grass 



Two handfuls of white dust shut in an urn of brass. 



It is, I confess, only an idler's amusement, for strong 

 and ambitious minds at such moments live far more in 

 the future than in the past. Scott has told us how 

 during early life he was in hours like these a dreamer 

 of strange adventures wherein he was always hero, and 

 it was on such a night that ' with an elder sister's air * 



