In the illuminated calendars prefixed to old Romish Missals, January is frequently represented as a man carrying faggots for burning, or a woodman’s axe, shivering and blowing his fingers. Modern artists and poets represent Winter as a feeble old man—a type of the pale “descending year.” Against this idea a celebrated writer thus warmly protests: —
Talk not of Winter as a dotard old!
Gray-haired and feeble, palsied every limb,
‘A withered branch his sceptre:’ ’tis a whim
He well may laugh to scorn; a warrior bold,
Girded with strength is he! Asleep—awake —
He is all energy to ear and sight;
He bids the winds go forth, and forests quake,
Like flowers before gay Summer’s fresh’ning gale;
He doth unchain the floods, and, in their might,