The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace our
steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and birds seek
their roosts, and cattle their stalls.
"Drooping the lab'rer ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and _now_ demands
The fruit of all his toil."
Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the wind
and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him as a
merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as summer. The
unexplored grandeur of the storm keeps up the spirits of the traveller. It
does not trifle with us, but has a sweet earnestness. In winter we lead a
more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under
drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose
chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The imprisoning drifts increase the
sense of comfort which the house affords, and in the coldest days we are
content to sit over the hearth and see the sky through the chimney top,
enjoying the quiet and serene life that may be had in a warm corner by the
chimney side, or feeling our pulse by listening to the low of cattle in
the street, or the sound of the flail in distant barns all the long
afternoon. No doubt a skilful physician could determine our health by
observing how these simple and natural sounds affected us. We enjoy now,
not an oriental, but a boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces,
and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams.
Sometimes our fate grows too homely and familiarly serious ever to be
cruel. Consider how for three months the human destiny is wrapped in furs.
The good Hebrew Revelation takes no cognizance of all this cheerful snow.
Is there no religion for the temperate and frigid zones? We know of no
scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England
winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath
deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its
saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave devout man spend the year in
the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak
adequately to his condition and experience, from the setting in of winter
to the breaking up of the ice.
Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer's hearth, when the
thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by nature and
necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is the happy
resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and thinks of his
preparedness for winter, and, through the glittering panes, sees with
equanimity "the mansion of the northern bear," for now the storm is over,
"The full ethereal round,
Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines out intensely keen; and all one cope
Of starry glitter glows from pole to pole."
The End.
