Under the snow-drifts the blossoms are sleeping, Dreaming their dreams of sunshine and June, Down in the hush of their quiet they're keeping Trills from the throstle's wild summer-sung tune. —Harriet Prescott Spofford
Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. It is the season with the coldest days and the lowest temperatures. In areas further away from the equator, winter is often marked by cold weather; it is associated with snow, frozen water, and limited daylight.
Last we consider the time of their coming, the season of the year. It was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, insolsitio brumali, the very dead of winter.
Wynter wakeneth al my care, Nou this leves waxeth bare; Ofte I sike ant mourne sare When hit cometh in my thoht Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht.
"Wynter Wakeneth al my Care" (14th cent.), st. 1 (MS. Harl. 2253. f. 49r)
This winters weather waxeth cold, And frost doth freese on every hill, And Boreas blowes his blasts soe bold That all our cattell are like to spill.
"Take Thy Old Cloak About Thee" (16th cent.), st. 1. Percy'sReliques (1765), vol. 1, p. 172
These Winter nights against my window-pane Nature with busy pencil draws designs Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines, Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines, Which she will make when summer comes again— Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold, Like curious Chinese etchings.
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark, Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
When now, unsparing as the scourge of war, Blasts follow blasts and groves dismantled roar; Around their home the storm-pinched cattle lows, No nourishment in frozen pasture grows; Yet frozen pastures every morn resound With fair abundance thund'ring to the ground.
Look! the massy trunks Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray, Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, Is studded with its trembling water-drops, That glimmer with an amethystine light.
Yet all how beautiful! Pillars of pearl Propping the cliffs above, stalactites bright From the ice roof depending; and beneath, Grottoes and temples with their crystal spires And gleaming columns radiant in the sun.
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.
But howling Winter fled afar To hills that prop the polar star; And loves on deer-borne car to ride, With barren darkness at his side, Round the shore where loud Lofoden Whirls to death the roaring whale, Round the hall where Runic Odin Howls his war-song to the gale.
O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
Observe and see how (in the winter) all the trees seem as though they had withered and shed all their leaves, except fourteen trees, which do not lose their foliage but retain the old foliage from two to three years till the new comes.
Book of Enoch, ch. 3, as translated by R. H. Charles,The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English,vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913), p. 189
On that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets.
On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence.
John Keats, "On the Grasshopper and Cricket", l. 10.Poems (1817), p. 93
His breath like silver arrows pierced the air, The naked earth crouched shuddering at his feet, His finger on all flowing waters sweet Forbidding lay—motion nor sound was there:— Nature was frozen dead,—and still and slow, A winding sheet fell o'er her body fair, Flaky and soft, from his wide wings of snow.
Every winter, When the great sun has turned his face away, The earth goes down into a vale of grief, And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay— Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
Never tell me of the sterner beauties of winter. Winter may have a mighty beauty of its own, where the mountain rises, white with the snow of a thousand years, hemmed in by black pine forests, eternal in their gloom; where the overhanging avalanche makes terrible even the slightest sound of the human voice ; and where waters that never flowed spread the glittering valleys with the frost-work of the measureless past. But the characteristic of English scenery is loveliness. We look for the verdant green of her fields, for the colours of her wild and garden flowers, for daisies universal as hope, and for the cheerful hedges, so various in leaf and bud. Winter comes to us with gray mists and drizzling rains: now and then, for a day, the frost creates its own fragile and fairy world of gossamer; but not often. We see the desolate trees, bleak and bare; the dreary meadows, the withered gardens, and close door and window, to exclude the fog and the east wind.
Up rose the wild old winter-king, And shook his beard of snow; "I hear the first young hare-bell ring, 'Tis time for me to go! Northward o'er the icy rocks, Northward o'er the sea, My daughter comes with sunny locks: This land's too warm for me!"
Oh the long and dreary Winter! Oh the cold and cruel Winter! Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lake and river, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow o’er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted Through the forest, round the village.
But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews; Arise, the pines a noxious shade diffuse; Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay, Time conquers all, and we must time obey.
In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan; Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.
Wintry boughs against a wintry sky; Yet the sky is partly blue And the clouds are partly bright:— Who can tell but sap is mounting high Out of sight, Ready to burst through?
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul. —Shakespeare
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, The seasons' difference, as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, Which, when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, "This is no flattery."
Winter's not gone yet, if the wild-geese fly that way.
William Shakespeare,King Lear (1608), act 2, sc. 4, l. 46
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 staringowl, Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan dothkeel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’ssaw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian’s nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.
Lastly came Winter cloathed all in frize, Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill; Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freese, And the dull drops, that from his purpled bill As from a limebeck did adown distill: In his right hand a tipped staffe he held, With which his feeble steps he stayed still; For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld; That scarce his loosed limbes he hable was to weld.
Edmund Spenser,The Faerie Queene (ed. 1609), bk. 7, canto 7, st. 31 (Legend of Constancie)
Under the snow-drifts the blossoms are sleeping, Dreaming their dreams of sunshine and June, Down in the hush of their quiet they're keeping Trills from the throstle's wild summer-sung tune.
She wanders to an iceberg oriflammed With rayed, auroral guidons of the North— Wherein hath winter hidden ardent gems And treasuries of frozen anadems, Alight with timid sapphires of the snow.
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 day With a continual flow. The cherished Fields Put on their winter-robe of purest white, 'Tis brightness all; save where the new Snow melts Along the mazy current.
James Thomson,Winter (1726), l. 229
Dread Winter spreads his latest glooms, And reigns, tremendous, o'er the conquer'd Year. How dead the vegetable kingdom lies! How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends His desolate domain.
James Thomson,Winter (1726), l. 1,024
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Make we here our camp of winter; And, through sleet and snow, Pitchy knot and beechen splinter On our hearth shall glow. Here, with mirth to lighten duty, We shall lack alone Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty, Childhood's lisping tone.
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