XXVII. Winter.
Reading edition
An interesting passage from Hesiod is given below. The extract is taken from the “Works and Days,” a poem giving instructions regarding agriculture, trade, and labor, blended with precepts of a moral character; and, in addition to the extremely remote date of its origin, the passage is also remarkable as one of the few instances in which a poet of the old heathen world has entered into detail of description on natural subjects. Its authenticity is, I believe, admitted. “The picturesque description given by Hesiod of Winter bears all the evidences of great antiquity,” says a learned German critic.
WINTER.
FROM HESIOD.
Beware the January month, beware
Those hurtful days, that keenly piercing air,
Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast
O’er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast.
392From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth
O’er the broad sea the whirlwind of the North,
And moves it with his breath; the ocean floods
Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods.
Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells
And strews with thick-branched pines the mountain dells
He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around;
The depth of forests rolls the roar of sound.
The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,
And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold;
Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,
But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.
Not his rough hide can then the ox avail;
The long-haired goat, defenseless, feels the gale;
Yet vain the northwind’s rushing strength to wound
The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around.
Translation of Sir C. A. Elton.
A WINTER SCENE.
FROM “THE SEASONS.”
The keener tempests rise; and fuming dun,
From all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb
A vapory deluge lies, to snow congeal’d.
Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;
And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.
Through the hush’d air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes
Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the sky,
With a continual flow. The cherish’d fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white.
’Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid sun,
Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
Earth’s universal face, deep hid and still,
Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox
Stands cover’d o’er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tam’d by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
393The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of th’ embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o’er the floor
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is:
Till, more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urg’d on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispers’d,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.
James Thomson, 1700–1748.
WINTER SONG.
FROM THE GERMAN.
Summer joys are o’er;
Flow’rets bloom no more
Wintry winds are sweeping,
Through the snow-drifts peeping,
Cheerful evergreen
Rarely now is seen.
Now no plumed throng
Charms the wood with song;
Ice-bound trees are glittering;
Merry snow-birds, twittering,
Fondly strive to cheer
Scenes so cold and drear.
Winter, still I see
Many charms in thee;
Love thy chilly greeting,
Snow-storms fiercely beating,
And the dear delights
Of the long, long nights.
Translation of T. Brooks. Ludwig Holty, 1748–1776.
394
HOLLY SONG.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly;
Then, heigh ho! the holly;
This life is most jolly!
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot;
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.
Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly;
Then, heigh ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly!
Shakspeare.
AN OLD-FASHIONED HOLLY HEDGE.
Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than an impassable hedge of about four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five feet in diameter, which I can show in my gardens at Say’s Court, at any time of the year, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves, the taller standards at orderly distances blushing with their natural coral—shorn and fashioned into columns and pilasters, architecturally shaped, at due distance?
Evelyn’s “Silva.”
CHRISTMAS CAROL.
HOLLY AND IVY.
I.
Holly and Ivy made a great party,
Who should have the mastery
In lands where they go.
395Then spake Holly, “I am fierce and jolly,
I will have the mastery
In lands where we go!”
Then spake Ivy, “I am loud and proud,
And I will have the mastery
In lands where we go!”
Then spake Holly, and bent down on his knee,
“I pray thee, gentle Ivy, essay me no villainy,
In lands where we go!”
II.
Nay, Ivy, nay, it shall not be, I wis,
Let Holly have the mastery, as the manner is.
Holly standeth in the hall fair to behold;
Ivy stands without the door, she is full sore a cold.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.
Holly and his merry men, they dance now and they sing;
Ivy and her maidens they weep and their hands wring.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.
Ivy hath a lyke,[15] she caught it with the cold,
So may they all have that do with Ivy hold.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.
Holly he hath berries as red as any rose,
The foresters, the hunters, keep them for the does.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.
Ivy she hath berries as black as any sloe,
There come the owls and eat them as they goe.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.
Holly he hath birds, a full, fair flock,
The nightingale, the popinjay, the gentle laverock.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.
Good Ivy say to us what bird hath thou;
None but the owlet that cries How! How!
Dating in the 14th century.
THE SEASONS.
A blue-eyed child that sits amid the noon,
O’erhung with a laburnum’s drooping sprays,
Singing her little songs, while softly, 'round
Along the grass the checkered sunshine plays.
All beauty that is throned in womanhood,
Pacing a summer-garden’s fountain-walks,
396That stoops to smooth a glossy spaniel down,
To hide her flushing cheek from one who talks.
A happy mother with her fair-faced girls,
In whose sweet Spring again her youth she sees,
With shout and dance, and laugh and bound and song,
Stripping an Autumn orchard’s laden trees.
An aged woman in a wintry room—
Frost on the pane, without the whirling snow—
Reading old letters of her far-off youth,
Of sorrows past and joys of long ago.
N. C. Bennet.
A WINTER SONG.
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;
Tu-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;
Tu-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
Shakspeare.
THE THRUSH.
Sing on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough;
Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain;
See aged Winter, 'mid his surly reign,
At thy blithe carol cheers his furrowed brow.
397So in lone Poverty’s dominion drear
Sits meek Content with light, unanxious heart,
Welcomes the rapid movements, bids them part,
Nor asks if they bring aught to hope or fear.
I thank thee, Author of this opening day!
Thou whose bright sun now gilds the Orient skies!
Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys,
What wealth could never give nor take away!
Yet come, thou child of poverty and care;
The mite high Heaven bestow’d, that mite with thee I’ll share.
Robert Burns, 1750–1796.
SONNET.
Sheath’d is the river as it glideth by,
Frost-pearl’d are all the boughs in forests old,
The sheep are huddling close upon the wold,
And over them the stars tremble on high.
Pure joys, these winter nights, around me lie;
’Tis fine to loiter through the lighted streets
At Christmas time, and guess from brow and pace
The doom and history of each one we meet;
What kind of heart beats in each dusky case;
Whiles startled by the beauty of a face
In a shop-light a moment; or, instead,
To dream of silent fields, where calm and deep
The sunshine lieth like a golden sleep—
Recalling sweetest looks of summers dead.
Alexander Smith.
SPRING AND WINTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
Gentle Spring, in sunshine clad,
Well dost thou thy power display!
For Winter maketh the light heart sad,
And thou—thou makest the sad heart gay.
He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train,
The sleet, and the snow, and the wind, and the rain;
And they shrink away, and they flee in fear,
When thy merry step draws near!
398Winter giveth the fields and the trees so old
Their beards of icicles and snow;
And the rain it raineth so fast and cold,
We must cover over the embers low;
And, snugly housed from the wind and weather,
Mope like birds that are changing feather.
But the storm retires, and the sky grows clear,
When thy merry step draws near!
Winter maketh the sun in the gloomy sky
Wrap him 'round with a mantle of cloud;
But, Heaven be praised! thy step is nigh;
Thou tearest away the mournful shroud,
And the Earth looks bright, and Winter surly,
Who has toiled for naught, both late and early,
Is banished afar by the new-born year,
When thy merry step draws near!
Translation by H. W. Longfellow. Charles, Duke of Orleans, 1391–1467.
WOODS IN WINTER.
When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill
That overbrows the lonely vale.
O’er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
And gladden those deep solitudes
Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the silence broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.
Where from their frozen urns, mute springs
Pour out the river’s gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater’s iron rings,
And voices fill the woodland side.
Alas! how changed from the fair scene,
When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green,
And the song ceased not with the day.
399But still wild music is abroad,
Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;
And gathering winds in hoarse accord
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.
Chill airs, and wintry winds! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year—
I listen, and it cheers me long.
H. W. Longfellow.
WINTER.
Sad soul—dear heart, O why repine?
The melancholy tale is plain;
The leaves of spring, the summer flowers
Have bloomed and died again.
The sweet and silver-sandaled Dew,
Which, like a maiden, fed the flowers,
Hath waned into the beldame Frost,
And walked amid our bowers.
Some buds there were—sad hearts, be still!
Which looked awhile unto the sky,
Then breathed but once or lived, to tell
How sweetest things may die!
And some must blight where many bloom;
But, blight or bloom, the fruit must fall!
Why sigh for spring or summer flowers,
Since winter gathers all?
He gathers all—but chide him not;
He wraps them in his mantle cold,
And folds them close, as best he can,
For he is blind and old.
Sad soul—dear heart, no more repine—
The tale is beautiful and plain:
Surely as winter taketh all,
The spring shall bring again.
T. B. Read.
400