Mirror of the Months

by P. G. Patmore

Now, one of the most beautiful sights on which the eye can open occasionally presents itself: we saw the shades of evening fall upon a waste expanse of brown earth, shorn hedge-rows, bare branches, and miry roads, interspersed here and there with a patch of dull melancholy green. But when we are awakened by the late dawning of the morning, and think to look forth upon the same, what a bright pomp greets us! What a white pageantry! It is as if the fleecy clouds that float about the sun at midsummer had descended upon the earth, and clothed it in their beauty! Every object we look upon is strange and yet familiar to us—“another, yet the same!” And the whole affects us like a vision of the night, which we are half conscious is a vision: we know that it is there, and yet we know not how long it may remain there, since a motion may change it, or a breath melt it away. And what a mysterious stillness reigns over all! A white silence! Even the “clouted shoon” of the early peasant is not heard; and the robin, as he hops from twig to twig with undecided wing, and shakes down a feathery shower as he goes, hushes his low whistle in wonder at the unaccustomed scene!

Now, the labour of the husbandman is, for once in the year, at a stand; and he haunts the alehouse fire, or lolls listlessly over the half-door of the village smithy, and watches the progress of the labour which he unconsciously envies; tasting for once in his life (without knowing it) the bitterness of that ennui which he begrudges to his betters.

Now, melancholy-looking men wander “by twos and threes” through market-towns, with their faces as blue as the aprons that are twisted round their waists; their ineffectual rakes resting on their shoulders, and a withered cabbage hoisted upon a pole; and sing out their doleful petition of “Pray remember the poor gardeners, who can get no work!”

Now, the passengers outside the Cheltenham night-coach look wistfully at the Witney blanket-mills as they pass, and meditate on the merits of a warm bed.

Now, people of fashion, who cannot think of coming to their homes in town so early in the season, and will not think of remaining at their homes in the country so late, seek out spots on the seashore which have the merit of being neither town nor country, and practise patience there (as Timon of Athens did), en attendant the London winter, which is ordered to commence about the first week in spring, and end at midsummer!

But we are forgetting the garden all this while; which must not be; for Nature does not. Though the gardener can find little to do in it, she is ever at work there, and ever with a wise hand, and graceful as wise. The wintry winds of December having shaken down the last lingering leaves from the trees, the final labour of the gardener was employed in making all trim and clean; in turning up the dark earth, to give it air; pruning off the superfluous produce of summer; and gathering away the worn-out attire that the perennial flowers leave behind them, when they sink into the earth to seek their winter home, as Harlequin and Columbine, in the pantomimes, sometimes slip down through a trapdoor, and cheat their silly pursuers by leaving their vacant dresses standing erect behind them.

All being left trim and orderly for the coming on of the new year. Now (to resume our friendly monosyllable) all the processes of nature for the renewal of her favoured race, the flowers, may be more aptly observed than at any other period. Still, therefore, however desolate a scene the garden may present to the general gaze, a particular examination of it is full of interest, and interest that is not the less valuable for its depending chiefly on the imagination.

Now, the bloom-buds of the fruit trees, which the late leaves of autumn had concealed from the view, stand confessed, upon the otherwise bare branches, and, dressed in their patent wind-and-water-proof coats, brave the utmost severity of the season,—their hard unpromising outsides, compared with the forms of beauty which they contain, reminding us of their friends the butterflies when in the chrysalis state.

Now, the perennials, having slipped off their summer robes, and retired to their subterranean sleeping-rooms, just permit the tops of their naked heads to peep above the ground, to warn the labourer from disturbing their annual repose.

Now, the smooth-leaved and tender-stemmed Rose of China hangs its pale, scentless, artificial-looking flowers upon the cheek of Winter; reminding us of the last faint bloom upon the face of a fading beauty, or the hectic of disease on that of a dying one; and a few chrysanthemums still linger, the wreck of the past year,—their various coloured stars looking like faded imitations of the gay, glaring China-aster.