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-hghts 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- w^atcher 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 1 High 

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

 property of cold w^ith 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 w^e 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 summernoon. It is the 

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

 Wordsw^orth 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 Bothnic main." 



