Well, I contend that there is beauty even in the fog; but I will not stop to prove this now. I will only say that there is less beauty in this than in most other aspects of nature, and much excuse for the connecting the foggy bare time of year with chill and dreary thoughts. Then, growth of flower and fruit seems suspended, save for a scarlet splash on the hedge here and there; and dead-fingered fungi crowd in bunches above the graves of the flowers, and at the roots of the trees.
The fields are bare, with no coming crops; only swart and self-satisfied pigs roam in herds over them: the grass has stopped growing; there is neither blossom nor fruit, nor leaves upon the trees; the birds’ nests are empty and sodden; hope and fulfilment seem alike departed, and death seems to reign in solitary gloom over the pale and shrouded land. Is not all this sad beyond tears?
No; we are sure that this is not sad in the year, really; for that memory and hope are alike supporting the year’s aged steps, as it totters into December. The hope is to be found in every twig, as well as in the broad brown lands that are beginning to be ruled in music lines of thin emerald. The memory suggests by analogy, and in a sweet figure, those words that have comforted many a mourner,—
“I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.”
It is not sad, really, to see the year in its bareness and barrenness; lonely winds searching over the cornless uplands, and sighing amid the stripped boughs; dull fogs brooding over the damp fields, and shrouding the universal desolation and decay. No; because the fruits have been, and are garnered in. It is not that the year’s work has been left, until too late, to do. It is only that it is done. It is not sad, really; for when we walk through the dull bare fields, that once moved with millions of stalks and one whisper, we think of the heaped, massed grain, or of the crumbling white flour, or of the tawny square loaves. Or, if we miss the dancing grass and the bobbing clover, we look at the goodly camps of close-stacked hay, under the peaked roofs of straw. And walking through the garden or the orchard, if for a moment we are chilled by the bare look of the pitiful cold boughs, black, and ragged, and starred with tears, our thought flies from these to the bright, smooth red or white cherries, and the dark blue-bloomed damsons, and the ruddy plums, and the yellow pears, and the grey greengages, and the dead-orange apricots, and the smooth nectarines, and the soft, crimson-hearted peaches,—all of which were, in their turn, yielded faithfully by those desolate branches. Ay, and we think with double satisfaction of a store yet left; of the cosy apples and freckled pears, sorted, wiped, and laid by in rows—brown-yellow nonpareils, streaked ribstones, mellow Blenheim oranges, and russets, betraying a gleam of gold just where the brown has rubbed. We may, perhaps, think—but this is a pleasing thought,—how different all would be with the year, were all this otherwise, and had the Spring, and Summer, and Autumn been squandered in merely making wreaths of dying flowers, that perished at the chill breath of the fogs and frosts.
Thus, then, our sober thought concludes. But still, to our fancy the year seems desolate, forlorn, and sad; the fog is a chill and heavy depression; the rain sobs out its heart in tears; the wind—
“Like a broken worldling wails,
And the flying gold of the ruined woodland drives through the air.”
In poetry, and even in prose, we do not most readily think of the year, between November and Christmas, as asleep after work done, but as stagnant, and brooding in despair over a wasted life and lost opportunities, and hopes withered and gone by. Why does this aspect arise most naturally to our mind? for no such thought would trouble that of a contemplating angel.
Well, the truth is, that we look through coloured glass, tinting with a hue of sadness to the mind’s eye things not really sad. We see the leaves circle down, and straightway are reminded that—