Oh, the snow lies white in the woods to-night—
The snow lies soft and deep;
And under the snow, I know, oh, ho!
The flowers of the summer sleep.
The flowers of the summer sleep, I know,
Snowed in like you and me—
Under the sheltering leaves, oh, ho,
As snug and as warm as we—
As snug and as warm from the winter storm
As we of the Hollow Tree.
Snowed in are we in the Hollow Tree,
And as snug and as warm as they we be—
Snowed in, snowed in,
Are we, are we,
And as snug as can be in the Hollow Tree,
The wonderful Hollow Tree.
Oh, the snow lies cold on wood and wold,
But never a bit comes in,
As we smoke and eat, and warm our feet,
And sit by the fire and spin:
And what care we for the winter gales,
And what care we for the snow—
As we sit by the fire and spin our tales
And think of the things we know?
As we spin our tales in the winter gales
And wait for the snow to go?
Oh, the winds blow high and the winds blow low,
But what care we for the wind and snow,
Spinning our tales of the long ago
As snug as snug can be?
For never a bit comes in, comes in,
As we sit by the fire and spin, and spin
The tales we know, of the long ago,
In the wonderful Hollow Tree.
Mr. Rabbit sat down then, and of course everybody spoke up as soon as they could get their breath and said how nice it was, and how Mr. Rabbit always expressed himself better in poetry than anybody else could in prose, and how the words and rhymes just seemed to flow along as if he were reeling it off of a spinning-wheel and could keep it up all day.
And Mr. Rabbit smiled and said he supposed it came natural, and that sometimes it was harder to stop than it was to start, and that he could keep it up all day as easy as not.
Then Mr. 'Possum said he'd been afraid that was what would happen, and that if Mr. Rabbit hadn't stopped pretty soon that he—Mr. 'Possum, of course—would have been so tangled up in his mind that somebody would have had to come and undo the knot.
MR. 'POSSUM WANTED TO KNOW WHAT MR. RABBIT MEANT BY SPINNING THEIR TAILS
Then he said he wanted to ask some questions. He said he wanted to know what "wold" meant, and also what Mr. Rabbit meant by spinning their tails. He said he hadn't noticed that any of them were spinning their tails, and that he couldn't do it if he tried. He said that he could curl his tail and hang from a limb or a peg by it, and he had found it a good way to go to sleep when things were on his mind, and that he generally had better dreams when he slept that way.
He said that of course Mr. Rabbit's poem had been about tails of the long ago, and he supposed that he meant the ones which his family had lost about three hundred years ago, according to Mr. Turtle, but that he didn't believe they ever could spin them much, or that Mr. Rabbit could spin what he had left.
Mr. 'Possum was going on to say a good deal more on the subject, but Mr. Rabbit interrupted him.