“Housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
They are all in a tale. It is always the tristis Hiems of Virgil. Catch one of them having a kind word for old Barbe Fleurie, unless he whines through some cranny, like a beggar, to heighten their enjoyment while they toast their slippered toes. I grant there is a keen relish of contrast about the bickering flame as it gives an emphasis beyond Gherardo della Notte to loved faces, or kindles the gloomy gold of volumes scarce less friendly, especially when a tempest is blundering round the house. Wordsworth has a fine touch that brings home to us the comfortable contrast of without and within, during a storm at night, and the passage is highly characteristic of a poet whose inspiration always has an undertone of bourgeois:—
“How touching, when, at midnight, sweep
Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark,
To hear,—and sink again to sleep!”
J. H., one of those choice poets who will not tarnish their bright fancies by publication, always insists on a snow-storm as essential to the true atmosphere of whist. Mrs. Battles, in her famous rule for the game, implies winter, and would doubtless have added tempest, if it could be had for the asking. For a good solid read also, into the small hours, there is nothing like that sense of safety against having your evening laid waste, which Euroclydon brings, as he bellows down the chimney, making your fire gasp, or rustles snow-flakes against the pane with a sound more soothing than silence. Emerson, as he is apt to do, not only hit the nail on the head, but drove it home, in that last phrase of the “tumultuous privacy.”
But I would exchange this, and give something to boot, for the privilege of walking out into the vast blur of a north-northeast snow-storm, and getting a strong draught on the furnace within, by drawing the first furrows through its sandy drifts. I love those
“Noontide twilights which snow makes
With tempest of the blinding flakes.”
If the wind veer too much toward the east, you get the heavy snow that gives a true Alpine slope to the boughs of your evergreens, and traces a skeleton of your elms in white; but you must have plenty of north in your gale if you want those driving nettles of frost that sting the cheeks to a crimson manlier than that of fire. During the great storm of two winters ago, the most robustious periwig-pated fellow of late years, I waded and floundered a couple of miles through the whispering night, and brought home that feeling of expansion we have after being in good company. “Great things doeth He which we cannot comprehend; for he saith to the snow, ‘Be thou on the earth.’”
There is admirable snow scenery in Judd’s “Margaret,” but some one has confiscated my copy of that admirable book, and, perhaps, Homer’s picture of a snow-storm is the best yet in its large simplicity:—
“And as in winter-time, when Jove his cold sharp javelins throws
Amongst us mortals, and is moved to white the earth with snows,
The winds asleep, he freely pours till highest prominents,
Hill-tops, low meadows, and the fields that crown with most contents
The toils of men, seaports and shores, are hid, and every place,
But floods, that fair snow’s tender flakes, as their own brood, embrace.”
Chapman, after all, though he makes very free with him, comes nearer Homer than anybody else. There is nothing in the original of that fair snow’s tender flakes, but neither Pope nor Cowper could get out of their heads the Psalmist’s tender phrase, “He giveth his snow like wool,” for which also Homer affords no hint. Pope talks of “dissolving fleeces,” and Cowper of a “fleecy mantle.” But David is nobly simple, while Pope is simply nonsensical, and Cowper pretty. If they must have prettiness, Martial would have supplied them with it in his