WINTER

THE GREAT BLIZZARD

HAMLIN GARLAND

A blizzard on the prairie corresponds to a storm at sea; it never affects the traveler twice alike. Each norther seems to have a manner of attack all its own. One storm may be short, sharp, high-keyed, and malevolent, while another approaches slowly, relentlessly, wearing out the souls of its victims by its inexorable and long-continued cold and gloom. One threatens for hours before it comes, the other leaps like a tiger upon the [defenseless settlement], catching the children unhoused, the men unprepared; of this character was the first blizzard Lincoln ever saw.

The day was warm and sunny. The eaves [dripped musically], and the icicles dropping from the roof fell occasionally with pleasant crash. The snow grew slushy, and the bells of wood teams jingled merrily all the forenoon, as the farmers drove to their timber-lands five or six miles away. The room was uncomfortably warm at times, and the master opened the outside door. It was the eighth day of January. One afternoon recess, as the boys were playing in their shirt-sleeves, Lincoln called Milton’s attention to a great cloud rising in the west and north. A vast, slaty-blue, [seamless dome], silent, portentous, with edges of silvery frosty light.

“It’s going to storm,” said Milton. “It always does when we have a south wind and a cloud like that in the west.”

When Lincoln set out for home, the sun was still shining, but the edge of the cloud had crept, or more properly slid, across the sun’s disk, and its light was growing cold and pale. In fifteen minutes more the wind from the south ceased—there was a moment of [breathless pause], and then, borne on the wings of the north wind, the streaming clouds of soft, large flakes of snow drove in a level line over the homeward-bound scholars, sticking to their clothing and faces and melting rapidly. It was not yet cold enough to freeze, though the wind was colder. The growing darkness troubled Lincoln most.

By the time he reached home, the wind was a gale, the snow a vast blinding cloud, filling the air and hiding the road. Darkness came on instantly, and the wind increased in power, as though with the momentum of the snow. Mr. Stewart came home early, yet the breasts of his horses were already [sheathed in snow]. Other teamsters passed, breasting the storm, and calling cheerily to their horses. One team, containing a woman and two men, neighbors living seven miles north, gave up the contest, and turned in at the gate for shelter, confident that they would be able to go on in the morning. In the barn, while rubbing the ice from the horses, the men joked and told stories in a jovial spirit, with the feeling generally that all would be well by daylight. The boys made merry also, singing songs, popping corn, playing games, in defiance of the storm.

But when they went to bed, at ten o’clock, Lincoln felt some [vague premonition] of a [dread disturbance] of nature, far beyond any other experience in his short life. The wind howled like ten thousand tigers, and the cold grew more and more intense. The wind seemed to drive in and through the frail tenement; water and food began to freeze within ten feet of the fire.

Lincoln thought the wind at that hour had attained its utmost fury, but when he awoke in the morning, he saw how mistaken he had been. He crept to the fire, appalled by the steady, solemn, [implacable clamor] of the storm. It was like the roarings of all the lions of Africa, the hissing of a wilderness of serpents, the lashing of great trees. It benumbed his thinking, it appalled his heart, beyond any other force he had ever known.

The house shook and snapped, the snow beat in muffled, [rhythmic pulsations] against the walls, or swirled and lashed upon the roof, giving rise to strange, [multitudinous sounds]; now dim and far, now near and all-surrounding; producing an effect of mystery and infinite reach, as though the cabin were a helpless boat, tossing on an angry, limitless sea.

Looking out, there was nothing to be seen but the lashing of the wind and snow. When the men attempted to face it, to go to the rescue of the cattle, they found the air impenetrably filled with fine, powdery snow, mixed with the dirt caught up from the plowed fields by a terrific blast, moving ninety miles an hour. It was impossible to see twenty feet, except at long intervals. Lincoln could not see at all when facing the storm. When he stepped into the wind, his face was coated with ice and dirt, as by a dash of mud—a mask which blinded the eyes, and instantly froze to his cheeks. Such was the power of the wind that he could not breathe an instant unprotected. His mouth being once open, it was impossible to draw breath again without turning from the wind.

The day was spent in keeping warm and in feeding the stock at the barn, which Mr. Stewart reached by desperate dashes, during the momentary clearing of the air following some more than usually strong gust. Lincoln attempted to water the horses from the pump, but the wind blew the water out of the pail. So cold had the wind become that a dipperful, thrown into the air, fell as ice. In the house it became more and more difficult to remain cheerful, notwithstanding the family had fuel and food in abundance.

Oh, that terrible day! Hour after hour they listened to that prodigious, appalling, ferocious uproar. All day Lincoln and Owen moved restlessly to and fro, asking each other, “Won’t it ever stop?” To them the storm now seemed too vast; too ungovernable, to ever again be spoken to a calm, even by God Himself.

It seemed to Lincoln that no power whatever could control such fury; his imagination was unable to conceive of a force greater than this war of wind or snow.

On the third day the family rose with weariness, and looked into each other’s faces with a sort of horrified surprise. Not even the invincible heart of Duncan Stewart, nor the cheery good nature of his wife, could keep a gloomy silence from settling down upon the house. Conversation was scanty; nobody laughed that day, but all listened anxiously to the [invisible tearing] at the shingles, beating against the door, and shrieking around the eaves. The frost upon the windows, nearly half an inch thick in the morning, kept thickening into ice, and the light was dim at mid-day. The fire melted the snow on the window-panes and upon the door, while around the key-hole and along every crack, frost formed. The men’s faces began to wear a grim, set look, and the women sat with awed faces and downcast eyes full of unshed tears, their sympathies going out to the poor travelers, lost and freezing.

The men got to the poor dumb animals that day to feed them; to water them was impossible. Mr. Stewart went down through the roof of the shed, the door being completely sealed up with solid banks of snow and dirt. One of the guests had a wife and two children left alone in a small cottage six miles farther on, and physical force was necessary to keep him from setting out in face of the deadly tempest. To him the nights seemed weeks, and the days interminable, as they did to the rest, but it would have been death to venture out.

That night, so disturbed had all become, they lay awake listening, waiting, hoping for a change. About midnight Lincoln noticed that the roar was no longer so steady, so relentless, and so high-keyed as before. It began to lull at times, and though it came back to the attack with all its former ferocity, still there was a [perceptible weakening]. Its fury was [becoming spasmodic]. One of the men shouted down to Mr. Stewart, “The storm is over,” and when the host called back a ringing word of cheer, Lincoln sank into deep sleep in sheer relief.

Oh, the joy with which the children melted the ice on the window-panes, and peered out on the familiar landscape, dazzling, peaceful, under the brilliant sun and wide blue sky. Lincoln looked out over the wide plain, ridged with vast drifts; on the far blue line of timber, on the near-by cottages sending up cheerful columns of smoke (as if to tell him the neighbors were alive), and his heart seemed to fill his throat. But the wind was with him still, for so long and continuous had its voice sounded in his ears, that even in the perfect calm his imagination supplied its loss with fainter, fancied roarings.

Out in the barn the horses and cattle, hungry and cold, kicked and bellowed in pain, and when the men dug them out, they ran and raced like mad creatures, to start the blood circulating in their numbed and stiffened limbs. Mr. Stewart was forced to tunnel to the barn door, cutting through the hard snow as if it were clay. The drifts were solid, and the dirt mixed with the snow was disposed on the surface in beautiful wavelets, like the sands at the bottom of a lake. The drifts would bear a horse. The guests were able to go home by noon, climbing above the fences, and rattling across the plowed ground.

And then in the days which followed, came grim tales of suffering and heroism. Tales of the finding of stage-coaches with the driver frozen on his seat and all his passengers within; tales of travelers striving to reach home and families. Cattle had starved and frozen in their stalls, and sheep lay buried in heaps beside the fences where they had clustered together to keep warm. These days gave Lincoln a new conception of the prairies. It taught him that however bright and beautiful they might be in summer under skies of June, they could be terrible when the Norther was abroad in his wrath. They seemed now as pitiless and destructive as the polar ocean. It seemed as if nothing could live there unhoused. All was at the mercy of that power, the north wind, whom only the Lord Sun could tame.

This was the worst storm of the winter, though the wind seemed never to sleep. To and fro, from north to south, and south to north, the dry snow sifted till it was like fine sand that rolled under the heel with a ringing sound on cold days. After each storm the restless wind got to work to pile the new-fallen flakes into ridges behind every fence or bush, filling every ravine and forcing the teamsters into the fields and out on to the open prairie. It was a savage and gloomy time for Lincoln, with only the pleasure of his school to break the [monotony of cold].

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Hamlin Garland (1860-⸺) was born in Wisconsin. His father was a farmer-pioneer, who, always eager to be upon the border line of agricultural development, moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota, from Minnesota to Iowa, and from Iowa to Dakota. The hope of cheaper acres, better soil, and bigger crops lured him on.

When Hamlin Garland turned his attention to literature he was keen enough to see the literary value of his early experiences. He resolved to interpret truthfully the life of the western farmer and its great hardships and limitations, no less than its hopes, joys, and achievements. In doing this, through a succession of short stories and novels, he won fame and success. In A Son of the Middle Border, an autobiography, he has written an intensely interesting and valuable record of typical experiences in the development of the Middle West. This selection is taken from Boy Life on the Prairie.

Discussion. 1. What distinguishes a blizzard from other violent storms? 2. What are the dangers when it comes without ample warning? 3. What was the manner of attack of this blizzard? 4. What caused the early darkness? 5. What was it in the storm that “appalled” the boy’s heart and “benumbed his thinking”? 6. What effect had it upon other members of the household? 7. Has man any power to oppose the violence of such a storm? 8. What was the velocity of the wind? 9. How long did the blizzard last? How did it compare in this respect with the ordinary blizzard? 10. What name was given it because of its force, fury, and duration? 11. What results of the storm proved its violence? 12. What new idea of the prairie did the storm give the boy Lincoln? 13. Pronounce the following: recess; infinite; columns; calm; heroism; implacable.

Phrases

THE FROST

HANNAH F. GOULD

The Frost looked forth on a still, clear night,

And whispered, “Now, I shall be out of sight;

So, through, the valley, and over the height,

In silence I’ll take my way.

I will not go on like that [blustering train],

The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,

That make such a bustle and noise [in vain];

But I’ll be as busy as they!”

So he flew to the mountain, and powdered its crest;

He lit on the trees, and their boughs he dressed

With diamonds and pearls; and over the breast

Of the quivering lake, he spread

A coat of mail, that it need not fear

The glittering point of many a spear

Which he [hung on its margin], far and near,

Where a rock could rear its head.

He went to the window of those who slept,

And over each pane like a fairy crept;

Wherever he breathed, wherever he stepped,

By the morning light were seen

Most beautiful things!—there were flowers and trees,

There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees;

There were cities and temples and towers; and these

All pictured in silvery sheen!

But he did one thing that was hardly fair—

He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there

That all had forgotten for him to prepare,

“Now, just to set them a-thinking,

I’ll bite this basket of fruit,” said he,

“And this costly pitcher I’ll [burst in three]!

And the glass of water they’ve left for me,

Shall ‘tchick’ to tell them I’m drinking.”

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Hannah F. Gould (1789-1865) was an American poet, born at Lancaster, Mass. At the age of eleven she removed with her parents to Newburyport, Mass., where she lived the rest of her life. A collection of her poems, entitled Hymns and Poems for Children, contains many beautiful selections.

Discussion. 1. Why does the poet personify “The Frost”? 2. What pictures do the following give you: “powdered its crest”; “their boughs he dressed”? 3. What picture of the window pane does stanza 3 give you? 4. Which line tells you on what kind of night to expect frost?

Phrases

THE FROST SPIRIT

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

He comes—he comes—the Frost Spirit comes! You may trace his footsteps now

On the naked woods and the [blasted fields] and the brown hill’s withered brow.

He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where their pleasant green came forth,

And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth.

He comes—he comes—the Frost Spirit comes!—from the frozen Labrador—

From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o’er—

Where the fisherman’s sail is stiff with ice, and the [luckless forms] below

In the [sunless cold] of the lingering night into marble statues grow!

He comes—he comes—the Frost Spirit comes!—on the rushing Northern blast,

And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his [fearful breath] went past.

With an [unscorched wing] he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow

On the darkly beautiful sky above and the [ancient ice] below.

He comes—he comes—the Frost Spirit comes!—and the quiet lake shall feel

The [torpid touch] of his [glazing breath], and ring to the skater’s heel;

And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass,

Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence pass.

He comes—he comes—the Frost Spirit comes!—let us meet him as we may,

And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away;

And gather closer the circle round, when that fire-light dances high,

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by!

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

For Biography, [see page 60].

Discussion. 1. Why does the poet personify “The Frost Spirit”? 2. Why is “Fiend” personified? 3. How can one “trace his footsteps” on woods and fields? 4. Locate on a map Labrador, the pine region of Norway, and the volcano of Hecla. 5. What is “the icy bridge of the northern seas”? 6. What are “the luckless forms below”? 7. Why does the poet say “In the sunless cold of the lingering night”? 8. What does the poet mean by “the shriek of the baffled Fiend”?

Phrases

THE SNOW STORM

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,

And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.

The steed and traveler stopped, the [courier’s feet]

[Delayed], all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the [radiant fireplace], enclosed

In a [tumultuous privacy] of storm.

Come, see the [north wind’s masonry].

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the [myriad-handed], his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly

On coop or kennel he hangs [Parian wreaths];

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Mauger the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate

A [tapering turret] overtops the work.

And when his [hours are numbered], and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in [slow structures], stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The [frolic architecture] of the snow.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a native of Boston, born not far from Franklin’s birthplace. He was the oldest among that brilliant group of New England scholars and writers that developed under the influence of Harvard College. Emerson was a quiet boy, but that he had high ambitions and sturdy determination is shown by the fact that he worked his own way through college. He is best known for his essays, full of noble ideas and wise philosophy, but he also wrote poetry. As a poet he was careless of his meter, making his lines often purposely rugged, but they are always charged and bristling with thoughts that shock and thrill like electric batteries. In 1836 he wrote the “Concord Hymn” containing the famous lines:

“Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world!”

His poems of nature are clear-cut and vivid as snapshots. “The Humble Bee,” as a critic puts it, “seems almost to shine with the heat and light of summer.”

Discussion. 1. Picture the scene described in the first five lines. 2. Compare with the picture given you in the first stanza of “Snow-Flakes,” page 80. 3. Read in a way to bring out the contrast between the wild storm and the scene within the “farmhouse at the garden’s end.” 4. What is meant by “fierce artificer”? 5. What is the “tile” with which the poet imagines the “unseen quarry” is furnished? 6. Of what are the “white bastions” made? 7. Does the use of the word “windward” add to the picture and does such detail add to the beauty of the poem or detract from it? 8. Who is described as “myriad-handed”? 9. What is the mockery in hanging “Parian wreaths” on a coop or kennel? 10. What picture do lines 20, 21, and 22 give you? 11. What does the “mad wind’s night-work” do for Art?

Phrases

SNOWFLAKES

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the [cloud-folds] of her garments shaken

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow,

Descends the snow.

Even as our [cloudy fancies] take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the [secret of despair],

Long in its [cloudy bosom] hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was born in Portland, Maine. In “The Courtship of Miles Standish” he has made us acquainted with his ancestors, John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, passengers on the Mayflower.

Longfellow’s education was obtained in Portland and at Bowdoin College, where he had for classmates several youths who afterward became famous, notably, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce. Upon Longfellow’s graduation, the trustees of the college, having decided to establish a chair of modern languages, proposed that this young graduate should fit himself for the position. Three years, therefore, he spent in delightful study and travel in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Here was laid the foundation for his scholarship, and, as in Irving on his first European trip, there was kindled that passion for romantic lore which followed him through life and which gave direction to much of his work. He mastered the language of each country visited, in a remarkably short time, and many of the choicer poems found in these languages he has given to us in English. After five years at Bowdoin, Longfellow was invited in 1834 to the chair of modern languages in Harvard College. Again he was given an opportunity to prepare himself by a year of study abroad. In 1836 he began his active work at Harvard and took up his residence in the historic Craigie House, overlooking the Charles River—a house in which Washington had been quartered for some months when he came to Cambridge in 1775 to take command of the Continental forces. Longfellow was thenceforth one of the most prominent members of that group of men including Sumner, Hawthorne, Agassiz, Lowell, and Holmes, who gave distinction to the Boston and Cambridge of earlier days.

For twenty years Longfellow served as a teacher, introducing hundreds of students to the literature of modern Europe. In his poetry, too, he exerted a powerful influence for bringing about a relationship between America and European civilization. He was thus a poet of culture, rendering a great service at a time when the thought of America was provincial. He was also a poet of the household, writing many poems about the joys and sorrows of home life, poems of aspiration and religious faith, poems about village characters as well as about national heroes. He excels, too, as a writer of tales in verse. “Evangeline,” a story of the Acadian exiles and their wanderings; “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” a story of early colonial life in Massachusetts; and “Hiawatha,” an Indian epic into which he put a vast amount of legendary matter belonging to the first owners of our country, are examples of his power in sustained verse narrative. His ballads, such as “The Skeleton in Armor” and “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” show his power to handle a legend in brief and stirring form. He was a writer of almost perfect sonnets, and a writer of prose of distinction. The most loved and most widely known of American poets, Longfellow helped to interpret our common life in terms of beauty.

Discussion. 1. What picture does the first stanza give you? 2. Compare this picture with that found in the first ten lines of “The Snow Storm,” page 78, and with that given in the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas of “Midwinter,” page 82. 3. To what does “her” refer in the second line? 4. Explain how “the troubled heart” makes “confession in the countenance.” 5. How does the poet fancy “the troubled sky” reveals its grief? 6. What is “the poem of the air”? 7. What are the “silent syllables” in which “the poem of the air” is recorded? 8. What is “whispered and revealed”?

Phrases

MIDWINTER

JOHN T. TROWBRIDGE

The speckled sky is dim with snow,

The light flakes falter and fall slow;

Athwart the hilltop, rapt and pale,

Silently drops a silvery veil;

And all the valley is shut in

By [flickering curtains] gray and thin.

But cheerily the chickadee

Singeth to me on fence and tree;

The snow sails round him as he sings,

White as the down on angels’ wings.

I watch the snow flakes as they fall

On bank and brier and broken wall;

Over the orchard, waste and brown,

All noiselessly they settle down,

Tipping the apple boughs and each

Light quivering twig of plum and peach.

On turf and curb and bower roof

The snowstorm spreads its [ivory woof];

It [paves with pearl] the garden walk;

And lovingly round [tattered stalk]

And [shivering stem] its magic weaves

A mantle fair as lily leaves.

The hooded beehive, small and low,

Stands like a maiden in the snow;

And an old door slab is half hid

Under an [alabaster lid].

All day it snows; the sheeted post

Gleams in the dimness like a ghost;

All day the blasted oak has stood

A muffled wizard of the wood;

Garland and airy cap adorn

The sumac and the wayside thorn,

And [clustering spangles] lodge and shine

In the dark tresses of the pine.

The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old,

Shrinks like a beggar in the cold;

In [surplice white] the cedar stands,

And blesses him with priestly hands.

Still cheerily the chickadee

Singeth to me on fence and tree;

But in my inmost ear is heard

The music of a holier bird;

And heavenly thoughts as soft and white

As snowflakes on my soul alight,

Clothing with love my lonely heart,

Healing with peace each bruiséd part,

Till all my being seems to be

Transfigured by their purity.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. John Townsend Trowbridge (1827-1916) was an American author. His home was in Cambridge, Mass., within the shadow of Harvard College. At one time he was one of the editors of Our Young Folks’ Magazine. “Midwinter” and “Darius Green and His Flying Machine” are two of his poems most widely known.

Discussion. 1. Compare the picture that the first stanza gives you with that given you in the first stanza of “Snow-Flakes” and that given you by the first ten lines of “The Snow Storm.” 2. Compare the picture that the fourth stanza gives you with that given by lines 17-22 of “The Snow Storm.” 3. In the fourth stanza, what does the poet say the snowstorm does? 4. What does the poet mean by “muffled wizard of the wood”? 5. What pictures does the sixth stanza give you? 6. Which of these descriptions seems to you most apt? 7. What does the poet mean by “inmost ear”? 8. Compare this meaning with that of “inward eye” in Wordsworth’s “The Daffodils” and with “eyes in the heart” in Lowell’s “To the Dandelion.” 9. What do the “heavenly thoughts” suggested by the scene do for the poet?

Phrases

BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly;

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As [benefits forgot];

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly;

Most [friendship is feigning], most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was the greatest English poet, and was one of the greatest poets the world has ever known. He wrote for all times and all peoples. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, where fifty-two years later he died. At the age of twenty-two he removed to London, where for twenty years he wrote poems and plays, was an actor, and later a shareholder in the theater. The last six years of his life he spent quietly at Stratford.

This song is from the comedy As You Like It, a story of the adventures of a group of courtiers and rustics in the forest of Arden. A charming element in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies is the introduction of song-poems or lyrics. All the writers of those days, the days of Good Queen Bess, wrote songs. England was “a nest of singing birds.” They were real songs, too, filled with joy and musical language, and all the people sang them to the accompaniment of the quaint musical instruments of the time. And all the people took part in games and pageants in “Merrie England,” and listened to the strange tales of seafarers, and went to the playhouse to see Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Discussion. 1. Why is the thought of green holly appropriate in connection with the winter wind? 2. What feeling does ingratitude arouse? 3. Why does the poet say the “tooth” of the wind is not so keen as man’s ingratitude? 4. What change of feeling do you notice after line 6? 5. What do you think caused the change? 6. In the second stanza read lines that show the poet did not really think that “life is most jolly.” 7. Which lines explain the poet’s distrust of friendship? 8. Which word in stanza I is explained by line 3 of stanza 2? 9. Find a word in stanza 1 that gives the same thought as the second line of the second stanza. 10. Give the meaning of “warp” in stanza 2 (an old Saxon proverb said, “Winter shall warp water”).

Phrases

WHEN ICICLES HANG BY THE WALL

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

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,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

Tu-whit;

Tu-who—a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

For Biography, [see page 85].

This is the second part of a song of four stanzas, found in the comedy Love’s Labor’s Lost. The first two stanzas are descriptive of spring, and introduce the song of the cuckoo. The last two stanzas are given here.

Discussion. 1. Do these lines describe life in the city or in the country? 2. What does the use of names, Dick, Tom, Joan, and Marian, add to the poem? 3. For what use were logs brought into the hall? 4. Can you see fitness in the use of the word “greasy”? 5. What is the song of the owl? 6. Explain the second line of stanza 2. 7. Why is the owl called “staring”?

Phrases

PART II
ADVENTURES OLD AND NEW

“Some say that the age of chivalry is past. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth, or a man or woman left to say, ‘I will redress that wrong or spend my life in the attempt.’”

—Charles Kingsley.

Copyright by Edwin A. Abbey (from a Copley Print, copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Boston)

THE ROUND TABLE OF KING ARTHUR

(Galahad is taking his place next to Sir Lancelot, while King Arthur rises to receive the new knight)

ADVENTURES OLD AND NEW
INTRODUCTION

Along with our interest in the world of animals and the plant world and the seasons, we are curious to know about people. A good deal of our conversation is about what others say or do. And when we say of a man, “He does things,” we pay him the highest possible compliment.

Ever since man came on the earth he has been “doing things.” Centuries ago, a man found out how to make fire by striking pieces of flint together. Then other men discovered strange things that might be done by means of the mysterious flame that sprang up. Another man ventured over the hill or mountain out into the unknown world beyond, or far across the blue water that seemed to reach to the end of the world. And when the traveler returned, men listened eagerly to his stories. So from earliest days men who ventured beyond the beaten track and did things their fellows were too lazy or too timid to think of doing have been interesting to those who stayed at home. In such ways ships were built to carry voyagers to strange places. In such ways commerce sprang up, for these adventurers brought back new foods and new objects, and knowledge of men who lived in strange places. In such ways islands and continents were discovered and settled, and men made war for the possession of rich territories, and life for all men became more varied and interesting through the adventures of the daring ones. For life is full of zest and interest only in proportion as the spirit of adventure enters into it.

The men in former times who stood out above their fellows because of their deeds were the subjects of song and story. Minstrels and poets in all times have put into words the wonder and admiration of the people for the doer of great deeds. Some stories of this kind you will read in the pages that follow—just a few of the thousands of stories of adventure that men have told in song and prose tale. Some of these stories introduce King Arthur and his Round Table, in the days of chivalry, when knighthood was in flower. A few of them are old ballads, which are tales made by the people or by some of their number, and sung by the people or by minstrels, or by mothers to their children, and so handed down from one generation to another. And some of them are very recent indeed, for they spring out of the heroic deeds of men in the World War that ended in November, 1918.

This spirit of adventure that makes men willing to face danger, and even death, to get some new experience or to render some service, the spirit that makes some men explore strange places, or seek for the South Pole, or fight in great battles—this spirit of adventure never dies. Sometimes the story is of a knight clad in armor, and sometimes it is about a man in khaki who died the other day that his fellows might live—the spirit is the same. Men no longer dress like Lancelot, or like George Washington, but they do the same sort of things. And people like to read of these things or hear the stories told just as much now as they did when the first traveler returned to the little village in Greece, or when Sir Gareth and Sir Gawain won their victories, or when General Putnam or Mad Anthony Wayne, in our Revolutionary War, performed some brave act for the American cause. And now, all over the world, groups gather about the soldier who has returned from Flanders Fields with his stories of valor. Always the spirit of adventure lives; always we like to hear what it brings back to us of news about life. If we have had no chance yet to do a thing worth men’s praise, we get a larger view of life, a better sense of what life really means, from reading or hearing such stories. And we mean to do brave things ourselves, some day, so the stories thrill us with the sense of what life holds for us.

These things we must remember, then, as we read. Through these stories we become partners in all the brave deeds of the past. And, again, the spirit of adventure is ever-living and is as keen today as in the past. And, finally, by such stories our own knowledge of the fine qualities of human nature is increased and our own experience enlarged so that we become braver and better because we see what wonderful things life can bring.