XLVIII 



JANUARY DAYS 



IN these midwinter days, how muffled 

 is the earth in its immaculate raiment, so 

 disguised in whiteness that familiar places 

 are strange, rough hollows smoothed to 

 mere undulations, deceitful to the eye 

 and feet, and level fields so piled with 

 heaps and ridges that their owners 

 scarcely recognize them. The hovel is 

 as regally roofed as the palace, the rudest 

 fence is a hedge of pearl, finer than a 

 wall of marble, and the meanest wayside 

 weed is a white flower of fairyland. 



The woods, which frost and November 

 winds stripped of their leafy thatch, are 

 roofed again, now with an arabesque of 

 alabaster more delicate than the green 

 canopy that summer unfolded, and all 

 the floor is set in noiseless pavement, 

 traced with a shifting pattern of blue 

 shadows. In these silent aisles the 

 echoes are smothered at their birth. 

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