 | Twice-told tales |  |
SNOW FLAKES.
There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning!
— and through the partially frosted windowpanes,
I love to watch the gradual beginning of the
storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely
through the air, and hover downward with uncertain
flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled
again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
These are not the big flakes, heavy with moisture,
which melt as they touch the ground, and are portentous
of a soaking rain. It is to be, in good earnest,
a wintry storm. The two or three people, visible on
the side-walks, have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed,
frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in
anticipation of a comfortless and blustering day. By
nightfall, or at least before the sun sheds another
glimmering smile upon us, the street and our little
garden will be heaped with mountain snow-drifts.
The soil, already frozen for weeks past, is prepared
and, to a northern eye, the landscape will lose its
melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its
own, when Mother Earth, like her children, shall
have put on the fleecy garb of her winter's wear.
The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle.
As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar
frost over the brown surface of the street; the withered
green of the grass-plat is still discernible; and
the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look
gray, instead of black. All the snow that has yet
fallen within the circumference of my view, were it
heaped up together, would hardly equal the hillock of
a grave. Thus gradually, by silent and stealthy influences,
are great changes wrought. These little
snow-particles, which the storm-spirit flings by hand-fulls
through the air, will bury the great earth under
their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold her
sister sky again for dreary months. We, likewise,
shall lose sight of our mother's familiar visage, and
must content ourselves with looking heavenward the
oftener.
Now, leaving the storm to do his appointed office,
let us sit down, pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy
as it may seem, there is an influence productive of
cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative thought, in
the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a
southern clime may woo the muse beneath the heavy
shade of summer foliage, reclining on banks of turf,
while the sound of singing birds and warbling rivulets
chimes in with the music of his soul. In our
vague enjoyment of a dream. My hour of inspiration
— if that hour ever comes — is when the green
log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame,
brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles high
up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down
among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement
rattles in the gust, and the snow-flakes or the
sleety rain-drops pelt hard against the window-panes,
then I spread out my sheet of paper, with the certainty
that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it, like
stars at twilight, or like violets in May — perhaps to
fade as soon. However transitory their glow, they
at least shine amid the darksome shadow which the
clouds of the outward sky fling through the room.
Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me,
her true-born son, be New England's winter, which
makes us, one and all, the nurslings of the storm, and
sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shrick of
the December blast. Now look we forth again, and
see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done.
Slow and sure! He has the day, perchance the
week, before him, and may take his own time to accomplish
Nature's burial in snow. A smooth mantle
is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat,
and the dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves
through the white surface in all parts of the garden.
The leafless rose bushes stand shivering in a shallow
snow drift, looking, poor things! as disconsolate as if
they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary
scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not
what they retain of life seems but the chilling sense
of death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs in midwinter!
The roofs of the houses are now all white,
save where the eddying wind has kept them bare at
the bleak corners. To discern the real intensity of
the storm, we must fix upon some distant object, — as
yonder spire, — and observe how the riotous gust
fights with the descending snow throughout the intervening
space. Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured;
then, again, we have a distinct, but transient
glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost; and
now the dense wreaths sweep between, as if demons
were flinging snow-drifts at each other, in mid-air.
Look next into the street, where we have an amusing
parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the
upper regions. It is a snow-battle of school-boys.
What a pretty satire on war and military glory might
be written, in the form of a child's story, by describing
the snow-ball fights of two rival schools, the alternate
defeats and victories of each, and the final
triumph of one party, or perhaps of neither! What
pitched battles, worthy to be chanted in Homeric
strains! What storming of fortresses, built all of
massive snow-blocks! What feats of individual prowess,
and embodied onsets of martial enthusiasm! And
when some well-contested and decisive victory had
put a period to the war, both armies should unite to
build a lofty monument of snow upon the battle-field,
and crown it with the victor's statue, hewn of the same
frozen marble. In a few days or weeks thereafter,
the level common; and, unmindful of the famous victory,
would ask — `How came it there? Who reared
it? And what means it?' The shattered pedestal
of many a battle-monument has provoked these questions,
when none could answer.
Turn we again to the fireside, and sit musing there,
lending our ears to the wind, till perhaps it shall seem
like an articulate voice, and dictate wild and airy
matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me to
sketch out the personification of a New England winter!
And that idea, if I can seize the snow-wreathed
figures that flit before my fancy, shall be the theme
of the next page.
How does Winter herald his approach? By the
shrieking blast of latter autumn, which is Nature's cry
of lamentation, as the destroyer rushes among the
shivering groves where she has lingered, and scatters
the sear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is
heard the people wrap themselves in cloaks, and shake
their heads disconsolately, saying — `Winter is at
hand!' Then the axe of the wood-cutter echoes
sharp and diligently in the forest, — then the coal-merchants
rejoice, because each shriek of Nature in
her agony adds something to the price of coal per
ton — then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance
through the atmosphere. A few days more;
and at eventide, the children look out of the window,
and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle
in the air. It is stern Winter's vesture. They crowd
around the hearth, and cling to their mother's gown,
the hollow roaring voice, that bellows adown the wide
flue of the chimney. It is the voice of Winter; and
when parents and children hear it, they shudder and
exclaim — `Winter is come! Cold Winter has begun
his reign already!' Now, throughout New England,
each hearth becomes an altar, sending up the smoke
of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity who
tyrannizes over forest, country-side, and town. Wrapt
in his white mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard
and hair a wind-tossed snow-drift, he travels over the
land, in the midst of the northern blast; and woe to
the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon his path!
There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice,
on the spot where Winter overtook him. On strides
the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broad lakes,
which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary
empire is established; all around stretches the desolation
of the Pole. Yet not ungrateful he his New
England children — (for Winter is our sire, though
a stern and rough one) — not ungrateful even for
the severities, which have nourished our unyielding
strength of character. And let us thank him, too, for
the sleigh-rides, cheered by the music of merry bells
— for the crackling and rustling hearth, when the
ruddy fire-light gleams on hardy Manhood and the
blooming cheek of Woman — for all the home-enjoyments,
and the kindred virtues, which flourish in a
frozen soil. Not that we grieve, when, after some
seven months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the
guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away
and strewing green grass on the path behind him.
Often, ere he will give up his empire, old Winter
rushes fiercely back, and hurls a snow-drift at the
shrinking form of Spring; yet, step, by step, he is
compelled to retreat northward, and spends the summer
month within the Arctic circle.
Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of
mind, have made the winter's day pass pleasantly.
Meanwhile, the storm has raged without abatement,
and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing
denser volumes to and fro about the atmosphere.
On the window-sill, there is a layer of snow, reaching
half way up the lowest pane of glass. The garden
is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two
or three spots of uncovered earth, where the gust has
whirled away the snow, heaping it elsewhere to the
fence-tops, or piling huge banks against the doors of
houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding
mid-leg deep across a drift, now scudding over the
bare ground, while his cloak is swollen with the wind.
And now the jingling of bells, a sluggish sound, responsive
to the horse's toilsome progress through the
unbroken drifts, announces the passage of a sleigh,
with a boy clinging behind, and ducking his head to
escape detection by the driver. Next comes a sledge,
laden with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper,
whom winter has surprised at a cold hearth. But
what dismal equipage now struggles along the uneven
street? A sable hearse, bestrewn with snow, is hearing
a dead man through the storm to his frozen bed.
of Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor child!
Evening — the early eve of December — begins to
spread its deepening veil over the comfortless scene;
the fire-light gradually brightens, and throws my
flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the
chamber; but still the storm rages and rattles against
the windows. Alas! I shiver, and think it time to be
disconsolate. But, taking a farewell glance at dead
nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snow-birds,
skimming lightsomely through the tempest, and flitting
from drift to drift, as sportively as swallows in the delightful
prime of summer. Whence come they?
Where do they build their nests, and seek their food?
Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer
around the earth, instead of making themselves the
playmates of the storm, and fluttering on the dreary
verge of the winter's eve? I know not whence they
come, nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by
that wandering flock of snow-birds.
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