James Thomson in the Seasons (' Winter'), The 

 say of * Fierce Aquarius staining the inverted 



year,' the constellation is more associated with 

 the rain-tides of spring. It is then, too, in 

 mid-February to mid-March, that, following 

 its passage through Capricorn, the Sun enters 

 it so that * benign ' and not ' fierce ' becomes 

 the apt epithet. 



All these 'watery constellations' Aquarius, 

 Capricorn, Cetus, the Dolphin, Hydra, Pisces 

 are set aside, in the mouths of poets and in 

 the familiar lore of the many, for the Hyades, 

 that lovely sestet of Taurus which in these 

 winter-months are known to all of us, where 

 they flash and dance south-east of the Silver 

 Apples of childhood's sky the clustered 

 Pleiades. They have become the typical 

 stars of the onset of winter the Lords of 

 Rain 'sad companions of the turning year' 

 as an old Roman poet calls them, ' the seaman- 

 noted Hyades' of Euripides, 'the Boar- 

 Throng' (feeders on the mast brought down 

 in late October and November by the 

 autumnal rains) of our Anglo-Saxon fathers, 

 the 'Storm-Star ' of Pliny, the Moist Daughters 

 of Spenser, so much more familiar to us in 

 Tennyson's 



" Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades 

 Vext the dim sea." 



287 



