black winter branches, and flies like an arrow of fire, shot by a hidden 
bowman, all the gray woods are lit up and radiant 
And the junco (I call him so by sort of conventionality as a tribute 
of social order, but call him by sweet familiarity, the snow-bird), so 
] love him. The snows and he blow in the same wind. The fiercer 
the wind the more rollicking his demeanor. Storms are fiddle-music 
to his jigging feet Some birds shun winter and love summer. A 
snowbird shuns summer and loves winter. He seeks winter in sum- 
mer. He is a hard-weather bird, like a stormy petrel. Sparrows in 
winter cling to hedges and to sheltered places, if there be any; but snow- 
birds get out where the winds sweep wildest, and the snow curls like 
white soot, sicked on by furious blasts. Then the snowbird revels and 
is glad. How often I have watched him and rejoiced in his pluck! 
Such a little laddie, but such a laughing courage, like a drummer lad in 
the battle’s front. 
Squirrels, rabbits, coons, and sometimes the barking wolf, with its 
wild-dog waggishness, cross and recross these wintry, snowy woods, their 
tracks returning on each other as in frantic glee. A rabbit is a timid 
jester, but loves a joke, and in moonlight forgets his fear and keeps 
tryst, and pounds the ground with his heels in a sort of bellicose 
hilarity. O, there are good times in winter woods—just as good times 
were had in the old pioneer days, with sleigh rides, and bussing-bees, 
and spellings-down. With trees in battle, birds and beasts making 
merry in the storm, you will do well to call winter a summer of 
delight. 
When slow mists make tree trunk and branch a sheet of ice, and 
when rain comes after mists and thickens the ice into a sword-sheath 
thickness, and trees stand against the light armed in silver, then might 
a dumb man sing for joy. Watch this glow against the sun, and hear 
this crash of battle-hour when their naked sword-blades smite together 
in indignant warfare, see them clad in ‘‘light as in a garment,’’ and you 
wonder what God does not think of. What God does not think of none 
need desire to invent. These icy armors are brilliant as any old-time 
armorer could make of silver, and this is a world lit with silver, green, 
and blood, and crossed with march of winds, and the tangle of branches, 
and the silver bird’s nests, and cornfields standing erect as soldiers on 
duty with silver plumes, and the wide-armed oak harnessed in silver, but 
nothing daunted. When sleets are on, the world is transfigured and the 
heart rejoices above the spring. Or when snows stream over the skies 
66 
