If So, You Can Indeed Boast Of Having Held Communion
With The Grim God Of Winter In Some Of His Stern, Though Captivating,
Moods.
Nor are these the only charms which the capricious monarch has in
store.
Never shall I forget, one balmy March morning, sauntering along the green
uplands of Sillery, towards the city, while the "sun god" was pouring
overhead, waves of soft, purple light. The day previous, one of our
annual, equinoctial storms had careered over the country; first, wind and
snow; then wind and sleet, the latter dissolving into icy tears,
encircling captive Nature in thousands of weird, glossy crystals; every
tree of the forest, according to its instinct, its nature, writhing in the
conqueror's cold embrace - rigid, creaking, ready to snap in twain rather
than bend, as the red oak or sugar maple, or else meekly, submissively
curving to the earth its tapering, frosted limbs, like the silver birch -
elegant, though fragile, ornament of the Canadian park, or else, rearing
amid air a graceful net-work - waving, transparent sapphire-tinted
arabesques, stretched on amber pillars; witness the Golden Willow. Each
gleam of sunshine investing this gorgeous tapestry with all the glories of
Iris; here, rising above his compeers, a stately lord of the grove, hoary
with frost and years, whose outspreading boughs are burnished, as if every
twig had been touched by the hand of an enchanter, whilst there, under his
shade, bends a mountain ash, smeared with the crimsoned berries of the
preceding summer, now ice-coated bon-bons eagerly plucked by troops
of roseate grosbeaks resting on the whitened branches.
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