WINTER 215 



rate all through February. Already Tennyson's neat but 

 perhaps too particular lines become applicable : 



1 Now fades the last long streak of snow, 

 Now burgeons every maze of quick 

 About the flowering squares, and thick 

 By ashen roots the violets grow.' 



By March 25, when technically winter ends, the world has 

 been enjoying an orgy of spring gardening, especially of seed- 

 sowing. So, however crabbed winter may be, spring is 

 always in its lap, and the season in England is the least 

 real of all the seasons : ' If winter comes shall spring be far 

 behind ? ' 



The feeling of the unreality of winter results, it may be, 

 from an incidental course of too gentle because unseasonable 

 weather over the new century. In the future, we shall no 

 doubt taste again the Shakespearean or the Pickwickian 

 Christmas. In the earliest of all his plays Shakespeare, 

 out-topping others in his native manner, put the sense of a 

 really seasonable, what we call an old-fashioned, winter into 

 two stanzas where each line is a picture : 



'When icicles hang by the wall, 



And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, 

 And Tom bears logs into the hall, 



And milk comes frozen home in the pail ; 

 When blood is nipt and ways be foul, 

 Then nightly sings the staring owl : 



Tu-whit, tu-who. A merry note. 

 While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 



When all about the wind doth blow, 

 And coughing drowns the parson's saw, 



And birds sit brooding in the snow, 

 And Marion's nose looks red and raw ; 



When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl 



Then nightly sings the staring owl : 

 Tu-whit, tu-who. A merry note. 



While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.' 



