Winter

thumb|upright=1.3|Under the snow-drifts the blossoms are sleeping,Dreaming their dreams of sunshine and June,Down in the hush of their quiet they're keepingTrills 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. __NOTOC__ A 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, in solsitio brumali, the very dead of winter. Lancelot Andrewes, Of the Nativity (1622), Sermon 15 Cf. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi" (1927) Anonymous 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's Reliques (1765), vol. 1, p. 172 B These Winter nights against my window-pane Nature with busy pencil draws designsOf 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. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "Frost-Work". Poems (1858), p. 53 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. William Blake, "To Winter", st. 1. Poetical Sketches (1783), p. 9 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 resoundWith fair abundance thund'ring to the ground. Robert Bloomfield, "Winter", st. 2. The Farmer's Boy (1869), p. 53                                      Look! the massy trunksAre 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. William Cullen Bryant, "A Winter Piece", l. 66. Poems (1832), p. 122 Yet all how beautiful! Pillars of pearlPropping the cliffs above, stalactites brightFrom the ice roof depending; and beneath,Grottoes and temples with their crystal spiresAnd gleaming columns radiant in the sun. William Henry Burleigh, "Winter", l. 24. Poems (1841), p. 38 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. John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers". Winter Sunshine (1876), p. 53 C 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. Thomas Campbell, "Ode to Winter", st. 2. The Pleasures of Hope, &c. (1803), p. 87 The frost performs its secret ministry,Unhelped by any wind. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight (wr. 1798; pub. 1817), l. 1 Every Fern is tucked and set,  'Neath coverlet,  Downy and soft and warm. Susan Coolidge, "Time to Go", sts. 6–7. Verses (1880), p. 103 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 roofOf undisturb'd Retirement, and the hoursOf long uninterrupted evening, know. William Cowper, The Task (1785), bk. 4, l. 120 D There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – Emily Dickinson, no. 258 (wr. c. 1861), st. 1 (ed. Thomas H. Johnson, 1960) E Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922), sec. 1 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 F thumb|Do not want to go out in fridge-crossed-with-swimming-pool-like world. —Helen Fielding Do not want to go out in fridge-crossed-with-swimming-pool-like world. Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999), entry for 27 January ’Tis a dull sight    To see the year dying, When winter winds    Set the yellow wood sighing:       Sighing, O sighing! Edward FitzGerald, "Old Song", st. 1. W. A. Wright (ed.) Letters and Literary Remains, vol. 1 (1889), p. 3 G 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. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908), ch. 3 K On a lone winter evening, when the frostHas 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 sweetForbidding 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. Fanny Kemble, "Winter", l. 9. Poems (1859), p. 41                                                  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. Charles Kingsley, The Saint's Tragedy (1851), act 3, sc. 1 L 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. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Francesca Carrara (1834), vol. 2, ch. 21 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!" Charles Godfrey Leland, "Spring", st. 1. The Music-Lesson of Confucius, &c. (1872), p. 139 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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), pt. 20 M    Clouded with snow    The bleak winds blow, And shrill on leafless bough The robin with its burning breast    Alone sings now. Walter de la Mare, "Winter", st. 1. The Listeners, &c. (1912), p. 28 Winter is Coming. George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (1996), motto of House Stark P 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. Alexander Pope, Winter: or, Daphne, l. 85. Sixth Part of Miscellany Poems (1709), p. 420 Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm!    Sing: Goddamm. Ezra Pound, "Ancient Music". Blast, vol. 1, no. 2 (July 1915), p. 20 Cf. "Sumer is icumen in" (c. 1250) R 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. Christina G. Rossetti, "A Christmas Carol" (1872; 1875), st. 1 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? Christina G. Rossetti, "Spring signals to Winter", st. 1. Poems (1890), p. 382 S thumb|When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul. —Shakespeare Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,The seasons' difference, as the icy fangAnd 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." William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599), act 2, sc. i, l. 5 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 staring owl,              Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow,    And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow,    And Marian’s nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl. William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595), act 5, sc. 2, l. 899 How like a winter hath my absence beenFrom thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! William Shakespeare, Sonnets (1609), no. 97 O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind" (wr. 1819; pub. 1820), sec. 5 In winter, when the dismal rain  Came down in slanting lines,And Wind, that grand old harper, smote  His thunder-harp of pines. Alexander Smith, A Life Drama, sc. 2. Poems (1853), p. 20 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. Harriet Prescott Spofford, "Under the Snowdrifts", st. 1. Poems (1882), p. 90 In winter I get up at night,And dress by yellow candle-light.In summer quite the other wayI have to go to bed by day. Robert Louis Stevenson, "Bed in Summer", st. 1. [[w:A Child's Garden of Verses|A Child's Garden of Verses]] (1885) 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. George Sterling, "A Wine of Wizardry" (wr. 1903; pub. 1907, 1908) T See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,Sullen and sad, with all his rising train;Vapors, and Clouds, and Storms. James Thomson, Winter (1726), l. 1. Expanded in The Seasons (1730) Through the hush'd air the whitening Shower descends,At first thin wavering; till at last the FlakesFall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the dayWith a continual flow. The cherished FieldsPut on their winter-robe of purest white,'Tis brightness all; save where the new Snow meltsAlong 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 extendsHis 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. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854) W 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 aloneWoman's smile and girlhood's beauty,  Childhood's lisping tone. John Greenleaf Whittier, "Lumbermen", st. 8. Songs of Labor, &c. (1851), p. 45 What miracle of weird transforming  Is this wild work of frost and light,  This glimpse of glory infinite? John Greenleaf Whittier, The Pageant, st. 8. The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, &c. (1872), p. 69 Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound. William Wordsworth, On the Power of Sound, st. 12. Yarrow Revisited, &c. (1835), p. 219 External links Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations'' (1922), p. 877–78 Category:Seasons