December is here—one of those mild cheery days, however, when you can hardly realise that the boughs are indeed bare, and the beds flowerless, and the Spring birds far away;—one of those days which tempt you out into the garden, to saunter and loiter there, and look at the patches that will be snowdrops soon, and to think longingly of leaves where you had before naturally and as of course acquiesced in the canopy of bare boughs;—a day on which you—at least I—do not care to go beyond the garden. To me it seems a peaceful, and far from gloomy, churchyard. Like a spire that tall, ancient, ivy-clothed spruce-fir stands out of the shrubbery; here, near it, the gay laburnum tresses lie buried; here the pink apple-blossom crumbled into dust; each round bed along the lawn is sacred to the memory of some choice rose; the violets sleep under that high wall—the lilies, tall, white, stately, but dead and gone—claim remembrance from each side of the walk; the geraniums, verbenas, heliotropes, petunias, have their cemetery in those dark beds on the smooth sward, and each flower has some spot specially or generally consecrated to it.
The memory of my old friends and companions has a tender charm for me, and I look at the stripped rose-twigs, and at the brown mould where the flowers were, with a faint halo of that feeling which is keen at the heart, when we pace among the mounds that hide the dust of friends. There is promise everywhere, I know, and the naked twigs are strung with germs of future leaves, and there are next year’s flowers sleeping at the heart of the rose. But I rather cling to any relic of the past, than care just now to look forward; and I hail this lingering arrested bud with the buff-yellow petals, or this half-shattered pure white blossom, as belonging to the sweet array of the dead flowers. True, I accept this cluster of the winter-cherry, leaning forward on to the path, an orange globe in a golden network; and the unfolding buds of the Christmas rose,—as being a link between the past and the future. But my thoughts slant backwards now, as I look upon the setting sun of the year; nor am I, in this mood, regarding it from the point that it will rise again all fresh and new to-morrow. No, I am not now concerned with the lovely wealth of leaves and flowers, the new year’s dower,—so soon all spent,—so soon all spent;—I am now of a mind to muse under the
“Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”
Let me sit down under this network of sycamore and chesnut boughs, while the faint patches of pale sunlight move about me on the rank and drenched, yet ungrowing grass; let me sit down under the bare boughs, while the brown, wet, marred leaves huddle by the side of the garden seat, and under the barred plank that serves as my footstool. I dare say my old and unfailing friend will soon come and perch near me, his lover, and match the sad cheery gleams of sunlight with sad cheery gleams of song. Bird of the mild dark loving eye, and quick quiet motion, and olive plumage, and warm sienna-red breast; bird of the soft song,—passion subdued now to tenderness, hope that has sunk to patience, eagerness that is merged in tranquillity,—faithful bird, whose every tone and motion, familiar and loved, seems to fit the Winter heart as well as the Spring fancy,—those fervent, passionate songsters of the Spring, that now are flown, they never drowned to my ear thy quiet song of peace; no, not even in the days when the nightingale’s thrilling utterance made the world as it were full of the unsubstantial beauty of a dream. And so now I feel a sort of right to the calm and comfort of thy tranquil, unfailing utterance, when the evanescent dream has passed away, and the disenchanted world stands naked. Thus, while you are young, O my friends, and all the boughs are clothed, and all the birds are singing, and your heart makes answer to the loveliness and the music,—do not disdain, then, to listen to and to heed that quieter voice which tells, in an undertone, very beautiful, if attended to, of the love of God. Your heart, if you knew it, cannot really afford to dispense with it when all the woods are loud, “and all the trees are green.” And if you did hear and heed and love it then, ah, how exquisite, how refreshing, how more than cheering the faithful notes appear, as you sit meditating under a pale winter sky, and looking at silent, leafless boughs,—and the songster draws nearer to you then, finding you alone!
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Well, let me, I say, sit me down on this garden seat, under these “bare ruined choirs,” and hail the one little chorister, whose quiet, modest song ever seems to me to compensate for the absence of all the rest. The dewdrops twinkle about me in the drenched grass, groups of brown toadstools cluster here and there, and wax-white fungi straggle away in a broken line; there is a scarlet gleam of hips in the rose-bushes under the shrubbery, and of mountain-ash higher above them. It is Winter, but nature has not forgotten to stick some sprays of Christmas about her bare pillars, and to twist them in devices about her arches, that run up around me into this groined roof above.
The first thing that we all should muse about, under the bare boughs, would be, I suppose, the leaves that once clad them. Ay, even if, under the full shading foliage, we never thought to give them an upward glance of gratitude, love, and admiration. But they are gone, and what was taken as a matter of course is valued, now that it is missed. There is repining as to the desolation of Winter, and this from those who did not consciously enjoy the Summer.
