Winter

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Winter, by Dallas Lore Sharp, Illustrated by Robert Bruce Horsfall
WINTER DALLAS LORE SHARP
THE FOX SPARROWS’ BATH
(page 56)
The Dallas Lore Sharp Nature Series
BY DALLAS LORE SHARP AUTHOR OF “THE FALL OF THE YEAR,” “THE LAY OF THE LAND,” “THE FACE OF THE FIELDS,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY ROBERT BRUCE HORSFALL
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE CHAPPLE PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, BY PERRY MASON COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE GOLDEN RULE PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE CENTURY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1908, 1911, 1912, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO THE FOUR SMALL BOYS ON MULLEIN HILL WHO HUNT THE SNOW WITH ME
As in The Fall of the Year , so here in Winter , the second volume of this series, I have tried by story and sketch and suggestion to catch the spirit of the season. In this volume it is the large, free, strong, fierce, wild soul of Winter which I would catch, the bitter boreal might that, out of doors, drives all before it; that challenges all that is wild and fierce and strong and free and large within us, till the bounding red blood belts us like an equator, and the glow of all the tropics blooms upon our faces and down into the inmost of our beings.
Winter within us means vitality and purpose and throbbing life; and without us in our fields and woods it means widened prospect, the storm of battle, the holiness of peace, the poetry of silence and darkness and emptiness and death. And I have tried throughout this volume to show that Winter is only a symbol, that death is only an appearance, that life is everywhere, and that everywhere life dominates even while it lies buried under the winding-sheet of the snow.