CHAPTER XXIII 



SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS 



The time to go into the winter woods for love 

 of them is in the still chill of dawn when the blue- 

 black of the west is hardly yet touched with the 

 purple that heralds the day, when the high sky 

 in the east begins to warm from gray to gold and 

 below black twigs make lace against an amber 

 glow that draws one as does the flame the moth. 

 At such a time the cold of the night may lie bitter 

 on the open fields and the snow crystals there 

 whine beneath the tread, but in the deep heart 

 of the woods the warmth of the day before is still 

 held entangled, an afterglow of the sun that waits 

 his golden coming once more. At that hour I 

 like to set my course eastward. The wind, if 

 there be one, will be at my back and half its keen- 

 ness dulled thereby, and the ever visible, growing 

 promise of the sun warms almost as much as his 

 later presence. 



Our coldest midwinter nights are still and the 



tangle of the trees enmeshes a protecting warmth 



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