existence that inflicts itself on our ears when the ground is bare. The earth is clothed in innocence as a garment. Every wound of the landscape is healed; whatever was stiff has been sweetly rounded as the breast of Aphrodite; what was unsightly has been covered gently with a soft splendour, as if, Cowley would have said, Nature had cleverly let fall her handkerchief to hide it. If the Virgin (Nôtre Dame de la Neige) were to come back, here is an earth that would not bruise her foot, nor stain it. It is

"The fanned snow

That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er ;-
Soffiata e stretta dai venti Schiavi,

Winnowed and packed by the Sclavonian winds,"

packed so hard sometimes on hill-slopes that it will bear your weight. What grace is in all the curves, as if every one of them had been swept by that inspired thumb of Phidias's journeyman.

J. R. Lowell.

Winter

O

WINTER, ruler of th' inverted year,

Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled, Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks Fringed with a beard made white with other snows Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds,

A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,

But urged by storms along its slipp'ry way,

I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st

And dreaded as thou art! Thou hold'st the sun
A pris'ner in the yet undawning east,
Shortening his journey between morn and noon,
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy west; but kindly still
Compensating his loss with added hours
Of social converse and instructive ease,
And gath'ring, at short notice, in one group
The family dispersed, and fixing thought,
Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.
I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted ev'ning, know.

William Cowper.

To a Snowflake

HAT heart could have thought of you?

WHAT

Past our devisal

(O filigree petal !)

Fashioned so purely,

Fragilely, surely,

From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,

Too costly for cost?

Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?-

"God was my shaper.

Passing surmisal,

He hammered, He wrought me,

From curled silver vapour,

To lust of His mind :

Thou couldst not have thought me !

So purely, so palely,

Tinily, surely,

Mightily, frailly,

Insculped and embossed,

With His hammer of wind,

And His graver of frost."

Francis Thompson.

The Snow-Walkers

HE who marvels at the beauty of the world in

summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain, the day and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the

stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. more heroic cast, and addresses the severe studies and disciplines come easier in the winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses.

Winter is of a intellect. The

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.

The simplicity of winter has a deep moral.

The return of Nature, after such a career of splendour and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquetand the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread.

John Burroughs.

The Winter Glass

THEN let the chill Sirocco blow,

And gird us round with hills of snow;

Or else go whistle to the shore,

And make the hollow mountains roar.

Whilst we together jovial sit

Careless, and crown'd with mirth and wit; Where though bleak winds confine us home, Our fancies round the world shall roam.

We'll think of all the friends we know,
And drink to all worth drinking to :
When having drank all thine and mine,
We rather shall want health than wine.

But where friends fail us, we'll supply
Our friendships with our charity.
Men that remote in sorrows live,
Shall by our lusty brimmers thrive.

We'll drink the wanting into wealth,
And those that languish into health,
The afflicted into joy, th' opprest
Into security and rest.

The worthy in disgrace shall find
Favour return again more kind,
And in restraint who stifled lie,
Shall taste the air of liberty.

The brave shall triumph in success,
The lovers shall have mistresses,
Poor unregarded virtue praise,
And the neglected poet bays.