The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with feathery
softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a summer zephyr
lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The meadow-mouse has slept
in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a hollow tree in the
depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the squirrel, and the fox have all been
housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the hearth, and the cattle have
stood silent in their stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its
first, not its last sleep, save when some street-sign or wood-house door
has faintly creaked upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her
midnight work,--the only sound awake twixt Venus and Mars,--advertising us
of a remote inward warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are
met together, but where it is very bleak for men to stand. But while the
earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes
descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain
over all the fields.
We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning.
The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the broadened
sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which enhances the
snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive. The floor
creaks under our feet as we move toward the window to look abroad through
some clear space over the fields. We see the roofs stand under their snow
burden. From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of snow, and in the
yard stand stalagmites covering some concealed core. The trees and shrubs
rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences,
we see fantastic forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky
landscape, as if nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by
night as models for man's art.
Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step abroad
to face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of their
sparkle, and a dull, leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid brazen light
in the east proclaims the approach of day, while the western landscape is
dim and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre Tartarian light, like the
shadowy realms. They are Infernal sounds only that you hear,--the crowing
of cocks, the barking of dogs, the chopping of wood, the lowing of kine,
all seem to come from Pluto's barn-yard and beyond the Styx;--not for any
melancholy they suggest, but their twilight bustle is too solemn and
mysterious for earth. The recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard,
remind us that each hour of the night is crowded with events, and the
primeval nature is still working and making tracks in the snow. Opening
the gate, we tread briskly along the lone country road, crunching the dry
and crisped snow under our feet, or aroused by the sharp clear creak of
the wood-sled, just starting for the distant market, from the early
farmer's door, where it has lain the summer long, dreaming amid the chips
and stubble; while far through the drifts and powdered windows we see the
farmer's early candle, like a paled star, emitting a lonely beam, as if
some severe virtue were at its matins there. And one by one the smokes
begin to ascend from the chimneys amidst the trees and snows.
