A GOOD WOED FOR WINTER • 51 



And, with a needle loosening the dry wick, 

 With frequent breath excites the languid flame. 

 Before the gathering glow the shades recede, 

 And his bent hand the new-caught light defends. 



Ovid heightens the picture by a single touch : — 



Ipse genu poito flammas exsuscitat aura. 

 Kneeling, his breath calls back to life the flames. 



If you walk down now into the woods, you may find a 

 robin or a blue-bird among the red-cedars, or a nuthatch 

 scaling deviously the trunk of some hardwood tree with 

 an eye as keen as that of a French soldier foraging for 

 the pot-au-feu of his mess. Perhaps a blue-jay shrills 

 cah cah in his corvine trebles, or a chickadee 



" Shows feats of his gymnastic play, 

 Head downward, clinging to the spray." 



But both him and the snow-bird I love better to see, 

 tiny fluffs of feathered life, as they scurry about in a 

 driving mist of snow, than in this serene air. 



Coleridge has put into verse one of the most beautiful 

 phenomena of a winter walk : — 



'■ The woodman winding westward up the glen 

 At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze 

 The viewless snow-mist weaves a glistening haze, 

 Sees full before him, gliding without tread, 

 An image with a halo round its head." 



But this aureole is not peculiar to winter. I have noticed 

 it often in a summer morning, when the grass was heavy 

 with dew, and even later in the day, when the dewless 

 grass was still fresh enough to have a gleam of its own. 

 For my own part I prefer a winter walk that takes in 

 the nightfall and the intense silence that erelong follows 

 it. The evening lamps looks yellower by contrast with 

 the snow, and give the windows that hearty look of 

 which our secretive fires have almost robbed them. Tho 

 stars seem 



