VII 
SNOW 
ALL through the long hours of yesterday the 
low clouds hung close above our heads, to pour 
with more unswerving aim their constant storm 
of sleet and snow, — sometimes working in soft 
silence, sometimes with impatient gusty breaths, 
but always busily at work. Darkness brought 
no rest to these laborious warriors of the air, 
but only fiercer strife: the wild winds rose; 
noisy recruits, they howled beneath the eaves, 
or swept around the walls, like hungry wolves, 
now here, now there, howling at opposite doors. 
Thus, through the anxious and wakeful night, 
the storm went on. The household lay vexed 
by broken dreams, with changing fancies of 
lost children on solitary moors, of sleighs hope- 
lessly overturned in drifted and pathless gorges, 
or of icy cordage upon disabled vessels in Arc- 
tic seas ; until a softer warmth, as of sheltering 
snow-wreaths, lulled all into deeper rest till 
morning. 
And what a morning! The sun, a young 
conqueror, sends in his glorious rays, like her- 
