To Westward; The
Last Of The Spent Day - Rust-Red And Pearl, Illimitable Levels Of Shore
Waiting For The Tide To Turn Again.
To eastward, black night among the
valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much
light as snail-slime from the moon.
Once or twice perhaps in the winter
the Northern Lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to
the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the Aurora
Borealis.
In January or February come the great ice-storms, when every branch,
blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch
nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped
crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If
you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch
snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together,
the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods
are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight;
the stampede of mailed feet up and down the glades; and a great dust of
battle is puffed out into the open, till the last of the ice is beaten
away and the cleared branches take up their regular chant.
Again the mercury drops twenty and more below zero, and the very trees
swoon. The snow turns to French chalk, squeaking under the heel, and
their breath cloaks the oxen in rime.
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