In The Yule-Log Glow, Book IV

by Harrison S. Morris

CHRISTMAS WEATHER IN SCOTLAND.

A winter day! the feather-silent snow
Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays
A fairy carpet on the barren lea.
No sun, yet all around that inward light
Which is in purity,—a soft moonshine,
The silvery dimness of a happy dream.
How beautiful! afar on moorland ways,
Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens,
(Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands
Stands like a mournful phantom,) hidden clouds
Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch
Is plumed and tasselled, till each heather stalk
Is delicately fringed. The sycamores,
Through all their mystical entanglement
Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green
Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air
In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone
Of limber bees that in the monk's-hood bells
House diligent; the imperishable glow
Of summer sunshine never more confessed
The harmony of nature, the divine,
Diffusive spirit of the beautiful.
Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed
Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run
The children in bewildering delight.
There is a living glory in the air,—
A glory in the hushed air, in the soul
A palpitating wonder hushed in awe.

Softly—with delicate softness—as the light
Quickens in the undawned east; and silently—
With definite silence—as the stealing dawn
Dapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall,
With indecisive motion eddying down,
The white-winged flakes,—calm as the sleep of sound,
Dim as a dream. The silver-misted air
Shines with mild radiance, as when through a cloud
Of semilucent vapor shines the moon.
I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun,
Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly,
Spreading fierce orange o'er the west) a scene
Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields,
Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked trees
Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges, thickly grown,
Twined into compact firmness, with no leaves,
Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun
To lustre touched the tremulous water-drops.
Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do
In fabling poem and provincial song,
The ploughboy shouted to his reeking train;
And at the clamor, from a neighboring field
Arose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooks
More clamorous; and through the frosted air,
Blown wildly here and there without a law,
They flew, low-grumbling out loquacious croaks.
Red sunset brightened all things; streams ran red
Yet coldly; and before the unwholesome east,
Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew down
The hill, with a dry whistle, by the fire
In chamber twilight rested I at home.

But now what revelation of fair change,
O Giver of the seasons and the days!
Creator of all elements, pale mists,
Invisible great winds and exact frost!
How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow?
What though we know its essence and its birth,
Can quick expound, in philosophic wise,
The how, and whence, and manner of its fall;
Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life—
The life that is in snow! The virgin-soft
And utter purity of the down-flake,
Falling upon its fellow with no sound!
Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakes
Fall gently, with the gentleness of love!
The earth is cherished, for beneath the soft,
Pure uniformity is gently born
Warmth and rich mildness, fitting the dead roots
For the resuscitation of the spring.
Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale,
Calmed every wind and loaded every grove;
And looking through the implicated boughs
I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow,
Refined by morning-footed frost so still,
Mantles each bough; and such a windless hush
Breathes through the air, it seems the fairy glen
About some phantom palace, pale abode
Of fabled Sleeping Beauty. Songless birds
Flit restlessly about the breathless wood,
Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm;
And as they quickly spring on nimble wing
From the white twig, a sparkling shower falls
Starlike. It is not whiteness, but a clear
Outshining of all purity, which takes
The winking eyes with such a silvery gleam.
No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud.
The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloud
The housewife's voice is heard with doubled sound.
I have not words to speak the perfect show;
The ravishment of beauty; the delight
Of silent purity; the sanctity
Of inspiration which o'erflows the world,
Making it breathless with divinity.

So thus with fair delapsion softly falls
The sacred shower; and when the shortened day
Dejected dies in the low streaky west,
The rising moon displays a cold blue night,
And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice.
Thicker than bees, about the waxing moon
Gather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hills
Rise glimmering to the blue verge of the night,
Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firs
Black-waving, solemn. O'er the Luggie-stream
Gathers a veiny film of ice, and creeps
With elfin feet around each stone and reed,
Working fine masonry; while o'er the dam,
Dashing, a noise of waters fills the clear
And nitrous air. All the dark, wintry hours
Sharply the winds from the white level moors
Keen whistle. Timorous in his homely bed
The school-boy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolves
Or beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient books
He has beheld, at creaking shutters pull
Howling. And when at last the languid dawn
In wind redness re-illumines the east
With ineffectual fire, an intense blue
Severely vivid o'er the snowy hills
Gleams chill, while hazy, half-transparent clouds
Slow-range the freezing ether of the west.
Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts
Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling
A snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day:
While grandfather over the well-watched fire
Hangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose.

Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls,
And to the polished smoothness curlers come
Rudely ambitious. Then for happy hours
The clinking stones are slid from wary hands,
And Barleycorn, best wine for surly airs,
Bites i' th' mouth, and ancient jokes are cracked.
And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun,
Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glow
Sinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds,
His flaming retinue, with dark'ning glow
Diverge! The broom is brandished as the sign
Of conquest, and impetuously they boast
Of how this shot was played,—with what a bend
Peculiar—the perfection of all art—
That stone came rolling grandly to the Tee
With victory crowned, and flinging wide the rest
In lordly crash! Within the village inn
They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaff
The beaded Usqueba with sugar dashed.
O, when the precious liquid fires the brain
To joy, and every heart beats fast with mirth
And ancient fellowship, what nervy grasps
Of horny hands o'er tables of rough oak!
What singing of Lang Syne till tear-drops shine,
And friendships brighten as the evening wanes!

David Gray.

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