FACES OF JANUS 



cold-blooded, of course, and not supposed 

 to mind the oppressiveness of the liquid 

 atmosphere. But after ourselves moving 

 in such an environment it is marvelous to 

 ponder that any creatures prefer it, and 

 good to foreknow that our own world will 

 swim out into a splendid frosty weather. 



For its days of quiet sparkle we would 

 remember January, not for lashing tem- 

 pests, April delusions, or brooding fog. 

 Unbroken snow with blazing spangles 

 shifting as the sun moves, and above it 

 twittering sparrows clinging by one claw 

 to stalks of yarrow or mustard while they 

 shake the seeds loose with the other; old 

 stone walls suddenly demonstrating that 

 they have color, when the foreground is 

 white, and showing bluish, brown, earthen 

 red, and gray alight with mica; streams 

 covered with pearly ice that floods into 

 brilliant orange at sunset; spruce and hem- 

 lock imperiously outlined on even far-off 

 hills; skating-time without and kindled 

 logs within that is the midwinter we re- 

 member when the sterner messengers sped 

 from the Pole have gone again. Were it 

 not for the blizzard we might fail to know 

 so well the comforting symbolism of fire- 

 15] 



