On every twig and rail and jutting spout
The icy spears are doubling their length
Against the glancing arrows of the sun,
And the shrunk wheels creak along the way,
Some summer accident long past
Of lakelet gleaming in the July beams,
Or hum of bee under the blue flag,
Loitering in the meads, or busy rill
which now stands dumb and still,
its own memorial, purling at its play along the slopes, and through the meadows next, till that its sound was quenched in the staid current of its parent stream.
In memory is the more reality. I have seen how the furrows shone but late upturned, and where the field-fare followed in the rear, when all the fields stood bound and hoar beneath a thick integument of snow.[1]
When the snow is falling thick and fast, the flakes nearest you seem to be driving straight to the ground, while the more distant seem to float in the air in a quivering bank, like feathers, or like birds at play, and not as if sent on any errand. So, at a little distance, all the works of Nature proceed with sport and frolic. They are more in the eye and less in the deed.
Dec. 31. Friday. Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and
- ↑ [Excursions, pp. 103, 104; Riv. 127, 128.]
