black winter branches, and flies like an arrow of fire, shot by a hidden 

 bowman, all the gray woods are lit up and radiant 



And the junco (I call him so by sort of conventionality as a tribute 

 of social order, but call him by sweet familiarity, the snow-bird), so 

 I love him. The snows and he blow in the same wind. The fiercer 

 the wind the more rollicking his demeanor. Storms are fiddle-music 

 to his jigging feet Some birds shun winter and love summer. A 

 snowbird shuns summer and loves winter. He seeks winter in sum- 

 mer. He is a hard-weather bird, like a stormy petrel. Sparrows in 

 winter cling to hedges and to sheltered places, if there be any; but snow- 

 birds get out where the winds sweep wildest, and the snow curls like 

 white soot, sicked on by furious blasts. Then the snowbird revels and 

 is glad. How often I have watched him and rejoiced in his pluck! 

 Such a little laddie, but such a laughing courage, like a drummer lad in 

 the battle's front. 



Squirrels, rabbits, coons, and sometimes the barking wolf, with its 

 wild-dog waggishness, cross and recross these wintry, snowy woods, their 

 tracks returning on each other as in frantic glee. A rabbit is a timid 

 jester, but loves a joke, and in moonlight forgets his fear and keeps 

 tryst, and pounds the ground with his heels in a sort of bellicose 

 hilarity. 0, there are good times in winter woods just as good times 

 were had in the old pioneer days, with sleigh rides, and bussing-bees, 

 and spellings-down. With trees in battle, birds and beasts making 

 merry in the storm, you will do well to call winter a summer of 

 delight. 



When slow mists make tree trunk and branch a sheet of ice, and 

 when rain comes after mists and thickens the ice into a sword-sheath 

 thickness, and trees stand against the light armed in silver, then might 

 a dumb man sing for joy. Watch this glow against the sun, and hear 

 this crash of battle-hour when their naked sword-blades smite together 

 in indignant warfare, see them clad in "light as in a garment," and you 

 wonder what God does not think of. What God does not think of none 

 need desire to invent. These icy armors are brilliant as any old-time 

 armorer could make of silver, and this is a world lit with silver, green, 

 and blood, and crossed with march of winds, and the tangle of branches, 

 and the silver bird's nests, and cornfields standing erect as soldiers on 

 duty with silver plumes, and the wide-armed oak harnessed in silver, but 

 nothing daunted. When sleets are on, the world is transfigured and the 

 heart rejoices above the spring. Or when snows stream over the skies 



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