Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in Great Britain. (continued 2)
Reading edition
1881
Severe frost from the 7th to the 27th January. Snow fell daily from the 9th to the 27th of the month.
1886-7
The concluding pages of this work are being written and printed during a hard frost. The closing days of the past year, and the early days of the current year will long be remembered amongst severe winters.
Perhaps we cannot more fitly close our account of “Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs,” than by quoting the following lines from the facile pen of Edith May, culled from the pages of Hale’s “Selections of Female Writers,” published in 1853.
FROST PICTURES.
When like a sullen exile driven forth, Southward, December drags his icy chain, He graves fair pictures of his native North On the crisp window-pane. So some pale captive blurs, with lips unshorn, The latticed glass, and shapes rude outlines there, With listless finger and a look forlorn, Cheating his dull despair. The fairy fragments of some Arctic scene I see to-night; blank wastes of polar snow, Ice-laden boughs, and feathery pines that lean Over ravines below. Black frozen lakes, and icy peaks blown bare, Break the white surface of the crusted pane, And spear-like leaves, long ferns, and blossoms fair Linked in silvery chain. Draw me, I pray thee, by this slender thread; Fancy, thou sorceress, bending vision-wrought O’er that dim well perpetually fed By the clear springs of thought! Northward I turn, and tread those dreary strands,— Lakes where the wild fowl breed, the swan abides; Shores where the white fox, burrowing in the sands, Harks to the droning tides. And seas, where, drifting on a raft of ice, The she bear rears her young; and cliffs so high, The dark-winged birds that emulate their rise Melt through the pale blue sky. There, all night long, with far diverging rays, And stalking shades, the red Auroras glow; From the keen heaven, meek suns with pallid blaze Light up the Arctic snow. Guide me, I pray, along those waves remote, That deep unstartled from its primal rest; Some errant sail, the fisher’s lone light boat Borne waif-like on its breast! Lead me, I pray, where never shallop’s keel Brake the dull ripples throbbing to their caves: Where the mailed glacier with his armed heel Spurs the resisting waves! Paint me, I pray, the phantom hosts that hold Celestial tourneys when the midnight calls; On airy steeds, with lances bright and bold, Storming her ancient halls. Yet, while I look, the magic picture fades; Melts the bright tracery from the frosted pane; Trees, vales, and cliffs, in sparkling snows arrayed, Dissolve in silvery rain. Without, the day’s pale glories sink and swell Over the black rise of yon wooded height; The moon’s thin crescent, like a stranded shell, Left on the shores of night. Hark how the north wind, with a hasty hand, Rattling my casement, frames his mystic rhyme. House thee, rude minstrel, chanting through the land, Runes of the olden times.