220 



AUTUMN AND WINTER 



southern, it is a time of observation hardly less rich than 

 other seasons. Coleridge perhaps of all writers most nicely 

 touched its spirit : 



* Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, 

 Whether the summer clothes the general earth 

 With greenness, or the robin sit and sing 

 Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch 

 Of mossy apple-trees, while the high thatch 

 Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eve-drops fall 

 Heard only in the trances of the blast, 

 Or if the secret ministry of frost 

 Shall hang them up in silent icicles 

 Quietly shining to the quiet moon.' 



Certainly in winter the sky takes a new importance, by 

 day or night. Our weather prophecies chiefly refer, if not to 

 winter, to the wintry half of the year. ' A red sky in the 

 morning is a shepherd's warning ; a red sky at night is a 

 shepherd's delight,' is one weather-rhyme that most properly 

 belongs to winter when the flocks need protection. And at 

 night when the frost comes how Orion gleams in the south- 

 west, Cassiopeia is printed in capitals overhead, and the con- 

 stellations, the Gemini, Canis Major, and the rest seem 

 visibly to swing round the Great Bear. 



