But look at that! A snowflake! Yes, it is beginning to snow--with the sun crossing the line! It is beginning to snow, and down with the first flakes, like a bit of summer sky drops a bluebird, calling softly, sweetly, with notes that melt warm as sunshine into our hearts.
"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone." But see how it snows! Yes, but see--
The willows gleam with silver light; The maples crimson glow-- The first faint streaks on winter's east, Far-off and low.
The northward geese, with winged wedge, Have split the frozen skies, And called the way for weaker wings, Where midnight lies.
To-day a warm wind wakes the marsh; I hear the hylas peep And o'er the pebbly ford, unbound, The waters leap.
The lambs bleat from the sheltered folds; Low whispers spread the hills: The rustle of the spring's soft robes The forest fills.
The night, ah me! fierce flies the storm Across the dark dead wold; The swift snow swirls; and silence falls On stream and fold.
All white and still lie stream and hill-- The winter dread and drear! Then from the skies a bluebird flies And--spring is here!
"It must be a lovely place _in the summer_!" the dull and irritating often say to me, referring to my home in the country. What they mean is, of course, "How wretched a place the country is in winter!" But that attitude toward winter grows less and less common. We are learning how to enjoy the winter; and it is my hope that this volume may distinctly contribute to the knowledge that makes for that joy. Behind such joy is love, and behind the love is understanding, and behind the understanding is knowledge.
The trouble with those who say they hate winter is a lack of knowledge. They do not know the winter; they never tramp the woods and fields in winter; they have no calendar of the rare, the high-festival days of winter.
Such a day is the one of this opening chapter--"Hunting the Snow." And the winter is full of them; as full as the summer, I had almost said! The possibilities of winter for nature-study, for tramps afield, for outdoor sport--for joy and health and knowledge and poetry are quite as good as those of summer. Try it this winter. Indeed, let the coldest, dullest, deadest day this winter challenge you to discover to yourself and to your pupils some sight, some sound, some happening, or some thought of the world outside that shall add to their small understanding, or touch their ready imaginations, or awaken their eager love for Nature.