A
Winter Walk
by Henry D. Thoreau
The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with
feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like
a summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The
meadow mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has
sat in a hollow tree in the depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the
squirrel, and the fox have all been housed. The watch-dog has lain
quiet on the hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their
stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its first, not its
last sleep, save when some street-sign or wood-house door, has
faintly creaked upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her
midnight work.—The only sound awake ’twixt Venus and
Mars,—advertising us of a remote inward warmth, a divine cheer and
fellowship, where gods are met together, but where it is very bleak
for men to stand. But while the earth has slumbered, all the air has
been alive with feathery flakes, descending, as if some
northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the
fields.
We sleep and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. The
snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the broadened
sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which enhances
the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive.
The floor creaks under our feet as we move toward the window to look
abroad through some clear space over the fields. We see the roofs
stand under their snow burden. From the eaves and fences hang
stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering some
concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on
every side, and where were walls and fences, we see fantastic forms
stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if
Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as
models for man’s art.
Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step abroad
to face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of their
sparkle, and a dull leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid brazen
light in the east proclaims the approach of day, while the western
landscape is dim and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre
Tartarean light, like the shadowy realms. They are Infernal sounds
only that you hear,—the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the
chopping of wood, the lowing of kine, all seem to come from
Pluto’s barnyard and beyond the Styx;—not
for any melancholy they suggest, but their twilight bustle is too
solemn and mysterious for earth. The recent tracks of the fox or
otter, in the yard, remind us that each hour of the night is crowded
with events, and the primeval nature is still working and making
tracks in the snow. Opening the gate, we tread briskly along the
lone country road, crunching the dry and crisped snow under our
feet, or aroused by the sharp clear creak of the wood-sled, just
starting for the distant market, from the early farmer’s door,
where it has lain the summer long, dreaming amid the chips and
stubble. For through the drifts and powdered windows we see the
farmer’s early candle, like a paled star, emitting a lonely beam,
as if some severe virtue were at its matins there. And one by one
the smokes begin to ascend from the chimneys amid the trees and
snows.
The
sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell,
The
stiffened air exploring in the dawn,
And
making slow acquaintance with the day;
Delaying
now upon its heavenward course,
In
wreathed loiterings dallying with itself,
With
as uncertain purpose and slow deed.
As
its half-wakened master by the hearth,
Whose
mind still slumbering and sluggish thoughts
Have
not yet swept into the onward current
Of
the new day;—and now it streams afar,
The
while the chopper goes with step direct,
And
mind intent to swing the early axe.
First
in the dusky dawn he sends abroad
His
early scout, his emissary, smoke,
The
earliest, latest pilgrim from the roof,
To
feel the frosty air, inform the day;
And
while he crouches still beside the hearth,
Nor
musters courage to unbar the door,
It
has gone down the glen with the light wind,
And
o’er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath,
Draped
the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,
And
warmed the pinions of the early bird;
And
now, perchance, high in the crispy air,
Has
caught sight of the day o’er the earth’s edge,
And
greets its master’s eye at his low door,
As
some refulgent cloud in the upper sky.
We hear the sound of wood-chopping at the farmers’ doors, far over
the frozen earth, the baying of the house dog, and the distant
clarion of the cock,. The
thin and frosty air conveys only the finer particles of sound to our
ears, with short and sweet vibrations, as the waves subside soonest
on the purest and lightest liquids, in which gross substances sink
to the bottom. They come clear and bell-like, and from a greater
distance in the horizon, as if there were fewer impediments than in
summer to make them faint and ragged. The ground is sonorous, like
seasoned wood, and even the ordinary rural sounds are melodious, and
the jingling of the ice on the trees is sweet and liquid. There is
the least possible moisture in the atmosphere, all being dried up or
congealed, and it is of such extreme tenuity and elasticity, that it
becomes a source of delight. The withdrawn and tense sky seems
groined like the aisles of a cathedral, and the polished air
sparkles as if there were crystals of ice floating in it. Those who
have resided in Greenland, tell us, that, when it freezes, “the
sea smokes like burning turf land, and a fog or mist arises, called
frost smoke,” which “cutting smoke frequently raises blisters on
the face and hands, and is very pernicious to the health.” But
this pure stinging cold is an elixir to the lungs, and not so much a
frozen mist, as a crystallized mid-summer haze, refined and purified
by cold.
The sun at length rises through the distant woods, as if with the faint
clashing swinging sound of cymbals, melting the air with his beams,
and with such rapid steps the morning travels, that already his rays
are gilding the distant western mountains. We step hastily along
through the powdery snow, warmed by an inward heat, enjoying an
Indian summer still, in the increased glow of thought and feeling.
Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not
need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but find her
our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds. If our
bodies were fed with pure and simple elements, and not with a
stimulating and heating diet, they would afford no more pasture for
cold than a leafless twig, but thrive like the trees, which find
even winter genial to their expansion.
The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.
Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead
leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the
bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the
coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a
foot-hold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and
nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it; and
accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the
tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a
Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for
shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of
the universe, and of such valor as God himself. It is invigorating
to breathe the cleansed air. Its greater fineness and purity are
visible to the eye, and we would fain stay out long and late, that
the gales may sigh through us too, as through the leafless trees,
and fit us for the winter;—as if we hoped so to borrow some pure
and steadfast virtue, which will stead us in all seasons.
There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out,
and which no cold can chill. It finally melts the great snow, and in
January or July is only buried under a thicker or thinner covering.
In the coldest day it flows somewhere, and the snow melts around
every tree. This field of winter rye, which sprouted late last fall,
and now speedily dissolves the snow, is where the fire is very
thinly covered. We feel warmed by it. In the winter, warmth stands
for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with
its bare stones shining in the sun, and to warm springs in the
woods, with as much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The steam which
rises from swamps and pools is as dear and domestic as that of our
own kettle. What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a
winter’s-day, when the meadow mice come out by the wallsides, and
the chickadee lisps in the defiles of the wood? The warmth comes
directly from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, as in
summer; and when we feel his beams on our backs as we are
treading some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special kindness,
and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place.
This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast; for in the
coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveler cherishes a
warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any
hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and
in winter, summer is in his heart. There is the south. Thither have
all birds and insects migrated, and around the warm springs in his
breast are gathered the robin and the lark.
In this glade covered with bushes of a year’s growth see how the
silvery dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in such
infinite and luxurious forms as by their very variety atone for the
absence of color. Observe the tiny tracks of mice around every stem,
and the triangular tracks of the rabbit. A pure elastic heaven hangs
over all, as if the impurities of the summer sky refined and shrunk
by the chaste winter’s cold, had been winnowed from the heavens
upon the earth.
Nature confounds her summer distinction at this season. The heavens seem
to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct.
Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian
night. The winter is an arctic summer.
How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred life which
still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and
woods covered with frost and snow, sees the sun rise.
“The foodless
wilds
Pour
forth their brown inhabitants.”
The
grey-squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in the remote glens,
even on the morning of the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and
Labrador, and for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians,
Novazemblaites, and Spitzbergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and
woodchopper, the fox, muskrat, and mink?
Still, in the midst of the arctic day, we may trace the summer to
its retreats, and sympathize with some contemporary life. Stretched
over the brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound meadows, we may
observe the submarine cottages of the caddice worms, the larvć of
the Plicipennes. Their small cylindrical cases built around
themselves, composed of flags, sticks, grass, and withered leaves,
shells, and pebbles, in form and color like the wrecks which strew
the bottom—now drifting along over the pebbly bottom, now whirling
in tiny eddies and dashing down steep falls, or sweeping rapidly
along with the current, or else swaying to and fro at the end of
some grass blade or root. Anon they will leave their sunken
habitations, and crawling up the stems of plants, or floating on the
surface like gnats, as perfect insects, henceforth flutter over the
surface of the water, or sacrifice their short lives in the flame of
our candles at evening. Down yonder little glen the shrubs are
drooping under their burden, and the red alder-berries contrast with
the white ground. Here are the marks of a myriad feet which have
already been abroad. The sun rises as proudly over such a glen, as
over the valley of the Seine or the Tiber, and it seems the
residence of a pure and self-subsistent valor, such as they never
witnessed; which never knew defeat nor fear. Here reign the
simplicity and purity of a primitive age, and a health and hope far
remote from towns and cities. Standing quite alone, far in the
forest, while the wind is shaking down snow from the trees, and
leaving the only human tracks behind us, we find our reflections of
a richer variety than the life of cities. The chicadee and nut-hatch
are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we
shall return to these last, as to more vulgar companions. In this
lonely glen, with its brook draining the slopes, its creased ice and
crystals of all hues, where the spruces and hemlocks stand up on
either side, and the rush and sere wild oats in the rivulet itself,
our lives are more serene and worthy to contemplate.
As the day advances, the heat of the sun is reflected by the hillsides,
and we hear a faint but sweet music, where flows the rill released
from its fetters, and the icicles are melting on the trees; and the
nut-hatch and partridge are heard and seen. The south wind melts the
snow at noon, and the bare ground appears with its withered grass
and leaves, and we are invigorated by the perfume which exhales from
it, as by the scent of strong meats.
Let us go into this deserted woodman’s hut, and see how he has passed
the long winter nights and the short and stormy days. For here man
has lived under this south hill-side, and it seems a civilized and
public spot. We have such associations as when the traveller stands
by the ruins of Palmyra or Hecatompolis. Singing birds and flowers
perchance have begun to appear here, for flowers as well as weeds
follow in the footsteps of man. These hemlocks whispered over his
head, these hickory logs were his fuel, and these pitch-pine roots
kindled his fire; yonder foaming rill in the hollow, whose thin and
airy vapor still ascends as busily as ever, though he is far off
now, was his well. These hemlock boughs, and the straw upon this
raised platform, were his bed, and this broken dish held his drink.
But he has not been here this season, for the phćbes built their
nest upon this shelf last summer. I find some embers left, as if he
had but just gone out, where he baked his pot of beans; and while at
evening he smoked his pipe, whose stemless bowl lies in the ashes,
chatted with his only companion, if perchance he had any, about the
depth of the snow on the morrow, already falling fast and thick
without, or disputed whether the last sound was the screech of an
owl, or the creak of a bough, or imagination only; and through his
broad chimney-throat, in the late winter evening, ere he stretched
himself upon the straw, he looked up to learn the progress of the
storm, and seeing the bright stars of Cassiopeia’s Chair shining
brightly down upon him, fell contentedly asleep.
See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper’s history! From
this stump we may guess the sharpness of his axe, and from the slope
of the stroke, on which side he stood, and whether he cut down the
tree without going round it or changing hands; and from the flexure
of the splinters we may know which way it fell. This one chip
contains inscribed on it the whole history of the wood-chopper and
of the world. On this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt,
perchance, or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the
forest, with what interest we read the tattle of cities, of those
larger huts, empty and to let, like this, in High-streets, and
Broad-ways. The eaves are dripping on the south side of this simple
roof, while the titmouse lisps in the pine, and the genial warmth of
the sun around the door is somewhat kind and human.
After two seasons, this rude dwelling does not deform the scene. Already
the birds resort to it, to build their nests, and you may track to
its door the feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a long time, nature
overlooks the encroachment and profanity of man. The wood still
cheerfully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that
fells it, and while they are few and seldom, they enhance its
wildness, and all the elements strive to naturalize the sound.
Now our path begins to ascend gradually to the top of this high hill,
from whose precipitous south side, we can look over the broad
country, of forest, and field, and river, to the distant snowy
mountains. See yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the
woods from some invisible farm-house; the standard raised over some
rural homestead. There must be a warmer and more genial spot there
below, as where we detect the vapor from a spring forming a cloud
above the trees. What fine relations are established between the
traveller who discovers this airy column from some eminence in the
forest, and him who sits below! Up goes the smoke as silently and
naturally as the vapor exhales from the leaves, and as busy
disposing itself in wreaths as the housewife on the hearth below. It
is a hieroglyphic of man’s life, and suggests more intimate and
important things than the boiling of a pot. Where its fine column
rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human life has planted
itself,—and such is the beginning of Rome, the establishment of
the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the prairies of
America, or the steppes of Asia.
And now we descend again to the brink of this woodland lake, which lies
in a hollow of the hills, as if it were their expressed juice, and
that of the leaves, which are annually steeped in it. Without outlet
or inlet to the eye, it has still its history, in the lapse of its
waves, in the rounded pebbles on its shore, and in the pines which
grow down to its brink. It has not been idle, though sedentary, but,
like Abu Musa, teaches that “sitting still at home is the heavenly
way; the going out is the way of the world.” Yet in its
evaporation it travels as far as any. In summer it is the earth’s
liquid eye; a mirror in the breast of nature. The sins of the wood
are washed out in it. See how the woods form an amphitheatre about
it, and it is an arena for all the genialness of nature. All trees
direct the traveler to its brink, all paths seek it out, birds fly
to it, quadrupeds flee to it, and the very ground inclines toward
it. It is nature’s saloon, where she has sat down to her toilet.
Consider her silent economy and tidiness; how the sun comes with his
evaporation to sweep the dust from its surface each morning, and a
fresh surface is constantly welling up; and annually, after whatever
impurities have accumulated herein, its liquid transparency appears
again in the spring. In summer a hushed music seems to sweep across
its surface. But now a plain sheet of snow conceals it from our
eyes, except where the wind has swept the ice bare, and the sere
leaves are gliding from side to side, tacking and veering on their
tiny voyages. Here is one just keeled up against a pebble on shore,
a dry beech leaf, rocking still, as if it would start again. A
skillful engineer, methinks, might project its course since it fell
from the parent stem. Here are all the elements for such a
calculation. Its present position, the direction of the wind, the
level of the pond, and how much more is given. In its scarred edges
and veins is its log rolled up.
We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger house. The surface of the
pond is our deal table or sanded floor, and the woods rise abruptly
from its edge, like the walls of a cottage. The lines set to catch
pickerel through the ice look like a larger culinary preparation,
and the men stand about on the white ground like pieces of forest
furniture. The actions of these men, at the distance of half a mile
over the ice and snow, impress us as when we read the exploits of
Alexander in history. They seem not unworthy of the scenery, and as
momentous as the conquest of kingdoms.
Again we have wandered through the arches of the wood, until from its
skirts we hear the distant booming of ice from yonder bay of the
river, as if it were moved by some other and subtler tide than
oceans know. To me it has a strange sound of home, thrilling as the
voice of one’s distant and noble kindred. A mild summer sun shines
over forest and lake, and though there is but one green leaf for
many rods, yet nature enjoys a serene health. Every sound is fraught
with the same mysterious assurance of health, as well now the
creaking of the boughs in January, as the soft sough of the wind in
July.
When
Winter fringes every bough
With
his fantastic wreath,
And
puts the seal of silence now
Upon
the leaves beneath;
When
every stream in its pent-house
Goes
gurgling on its way,
And
in his gallery the mouse
Nibbleth
the meadow hay;
Methinks
the summer still is nigh,
And
lurketh underneath,
As
that same meadow mouse doth lie
Snug
in the last year’s heath.
And
if perchance the Chickadee
Lisp
a faint note anon,
The
snow in summer’s canopy,
Which
she herself put on.
Fair
blossoms deck the cheerful trees,
And
dazzling fruits depend,
The
north wind sighs a summer breeze,
The
nipping frosts to fend,
Bringing
glad tidings unto me,
The
while I stand all ear,
Of
a serene eternity,
Which
need not winter fear.
Out
on the silent pond straightway
The
restless ice doth crack,
And
pond sprites merry gambols play
Amid
the deafening rack.
Eager
I hasten to the vale,
As
if I heard brave news,
How
nature held high festival,
Which
it were hard to lose.
I
gambol with my neighbor ice,
And
sympathizing quake,
As
each new crack darts in a trice
Across
the gladsome lake.
One
with the cricket in the ground,
And
fagot on the hearth,
Resounds
the rare domestic sound
Along
the forest path.
Before night we will take a journey on skates along the course of
this meandering river, as full of novelty to one who sits by the
cottage fire all the winter’s day, as if it were over the polar
ice, with captain Parry or Franklin; following the winding of the
stream, now flowing amid hills, now spreading out into fair meadows,
and forming a myriad coves and bays where the pine and hemlock
overarch. The river flows in the rear of the towns, and we see all
things from a new and wilder side. The fields and gardens come down
to it with a frankness, and freedom from pretension, which they do
not wear on the highway. It is the outside and edge of the earth.
Our eyes are not offended by violent contrasts. The last rail of the
farmer’s fence is some swaying willow bough, which still preserves
its freshness, and here at length all fences stop, and we no longer
cross any road. We may go far up within the country now by the most
retired and level road, never climbing a hill, but by broad levels
ascending to the upland meadows. It is a beautiful illustration of
the law of obedience, the flow of a river; the path for a sick man,
a highway down which an acorn cup may float secure with its freight.
Its slight occasional falls, whose precipices would not diversify
the landscape, are celebrated by mist and spray, and attract the
traveler from far and near. From the remote interior, its current
conducts him by broad and easy steps, or by one gentler inclined
plane, to the sea. Thus by an early and constant yielding to the
inequalities of the ground it secures itself the easiest passage.
No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times, and now we draw
near to the empire of the fishes. Our feet glide swiftly over
unfathomed depths, where in summer our line tempted the pout and
perch, and where the stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors,
formed by the bulrushes. The deep, impenetrable marsh, where the
heron waded, and bittern squatted, is made pervious to our swift
shoes, as if a thousand railroads had been made into it. With one
impulse we are carried to the cabin of the muskrat, that earliest
settler, and see him dart away under the transparent ice, like a
furred fish, to his hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over
meadows where lately “the mower whet his scythe,” through beds
of frozen cranberries mixed with meadow grass. We skate near to
where the blackbird, the pewee, and the kingbird hung their nests
over the water, and the hornets builded from the maple in the swamp.
How many gay warblers now following the sun, have radiated from this
nest of silver birch and thistle down! On the swamp’s outer edge
was hung the supermarine village, where no foot penetrated. In this
hollow tree the wood-duck reared her brood, and slid away each day
to forage in yonder fen.
In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried
specimens, in their natural order and position. The meadows and
forests are a hortus siccus. The leaves and grasses stand
perfectly pressed by the air without screw or gum, and the bird’s
nests are not hung on an artificial twig, but where they builded
them. We go about dry shod to inspect the summer’s work in the
rank swamp, and see what a growth have got the alders, the willows,
and the maples; testifying to how many warm suns, and fertilizing
dews and showers. See what strides their boughs took in the
luxuriant summer,—and anon these dormant buds will carry them
onward and upward another span into the heavens.
Occasionally we wade through fields of snow, under whose depths the river
is lost for many rods, to appear again to the right or left, where
we least expected; still holding on its way underneath, with a
faint, stertorous, rumbling sound, as if, like the bear and marmot,
it too had hibernated, and we had followed its faint summer trail to
where it earthed itself in snow and ice. At first we should have
thought that rivers would be empty and dry in mid winter, or else
frozen solid till the spring thawed them; but their volume is not
diminished even, for only a superficial cold bridges their surfaces.
The thousand springs which feed the lakes and streams are flowing
still. The issues of a few surface springs only are closed, and they
go to swell the deep reservoirs. Nature’s wells are below the
frost. The summer brooks are not filled with snow-water, nor does
the mower quench his thirst with that alone. The streams are swollen
when the snow melts in the spring, because nature’s work has been
delayed, the water being turned into ice and snow, whose particles
are less smooth and round, and do not find their level so soon.
Far over the ice, between the hemlock woods and snow-clad hills, stands
the pickerel fisher, his lines set in some retired cove, like a
Finlander, with his arms thrust into the pouches of his dreadnaught;
with dull, snowy, fishy thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated
a few inches from his race; dumb, erect, and made to be enveloped in
clouds and snows, like the pines on shore. In these wild scenes, men
stand about in the scenery, or move deliberately and heavily, having
sacrificed the sprightliness and vivacity of towns to the dumb
sobriety of nature. He does not make the scenery less wild, more
than the jays and muskrats, but stands there as a part of it, as the
natives are represented in the voyages of early navigators, at
Nootka sound, and on the North-west coast, with their furs about
them, before they were tempted to loquacity by a scrap of iron. He
belongs to the natural family of man, and is planted deeper in
nature and has more root than the inhabitants of towns. Go to him,
ask what luck, and you will learn that he too is a worshiper of the
unseen. Hear with what sincere deference and waving gesture in his
tone, he speaks of the lake pickerel, which he has never seen, his
primitive and ideal race of pickerel. He is connected with the shore
still, as by a fish-line, and yet remembers the season when he took
fish through the ice on the pond, while the peas were up in his
garden at home.
But now, while we have loitered, the clouds have gathered again, and a
few straggling snow-flakes are beginning to descend. Faster and
faster they fall, shutting out the distant objects from sight. The
snow falls on every wood and field, and no crevice is forgotten; by
the river and the pond, on the hill and in the valley. Quadrupeds
are confined to their coverts, and the birds sit upon their perches
this peaceful hour. There is not so much sound as in fair weather,
but silently and gradually every slope, and the gray walls and
fences, and the polished ice, and the sere leaves, which were not
buried before, are concealed, and the tracks of men and beasts are
lost. With so little effort does nature reassert her rule, and blot
out the traces of men. Hear how Homer has described the same. “The
snow flakes fall thick and fast on a winter’s day. The winds are
lulled, and the snow falls incessant, covering the tops of the
mountains, and the hills, and the plains where the lotus tree grows,
and the cultivated fields, and they are falling by the inlets and
shores of the foaming sea, but are silently dissolved by the
waves.” The snow levels all things, and infolds them deeper in the
bosom of nature, as, in the slow summer, vegetation creeps up to the
entablature of the temple, and the turrets of the castle, and helps
her to prevail over art.
The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace our
steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and
birds seek their roosts, and cattle their stalls.
“Drooping the lab’rer ox
Stands
covered o’er with snow, and now demands
The
fruit of all his toil.”
Though
winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the wind
and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him
as a merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as
summer. The unexplored grandeur of the storm keeps up the spirits of
the traveller. It does not trifle with us, but has a sweet
earnestness. In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are
warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors
are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully
ascends. The imprisoning drifts increase the sense of comfort which
the house affords, and in the coldest days we are content to sit
over the hearth and see the sky through the chimney top, enjoying
the quiet and serene life that may be had in a warm corner by the
chimney side, or feeling our pulse by listening to the low of cattle
in the street, or the sound of the flail in distant barns all the
long afternoon. No doubt a skillful physician could determine our
health by observing how these simple and natural sounds affected us.
We enjoy now, not an oriental, but a boreal leisure, around warm
stoves and fire-places, and watch the shadow of motes in the
sunbeams.
Sometimes our fate grows too homely and familiarly serious ever to be
cured. Consider how for three months the human destiny is wrapped in
furs. The good Hebrew revelation takes no cognizance of all this
cheerful snow. Is there no religion for the temperate and frigid
zones? We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of
the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never
been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after
all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and
austere. Let a brave devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine
or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew scriptures speak adequately of
his condition and experience, from the setting in of winter to the
breaking up of the ice.
Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer’s hearth, when
the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by
nature and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is
the happy resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and
thinks of his preparedness for winter, and through the glittering
panes, sees with equanimity “the mansion of the northern bear,”
for now the storm is over,
“The full ethereal round,
Infinite
worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines
out intensely keen; and all one cope
Of
starry glitter glows from pole to pole.”
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A
Note on the Text:
-
1st
published in The Dial (October 1843)
-
Source:
The Dial [(October 1843) pp. 211-226]
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