Seasonal:
Seasonal:
Winter Wanderings
Winter Wanderings
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A potpourri of poetry and prose
MARKING THE CHANGING SEASONS
This page is updated throughout each season
Extract from Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
The seasons of my childhood seemed (of course) so violent, so intense and true to their nature, they have become for me ever since a reference of perfection whenever such names are mentioned. They possessed us so completely they seemed to change our nationality; and when I look back to the valley it cannot be one place I see, but village-winter or village-summer, both separate. It becomes increasingly easy in urban life to ignore their extreme humours, but in those days winter and summer dominated our very action, broke into our houses, conscripted our thoughts, ruled our games, and ordered our lives.
Winter was no more typical of our valley than summer, it was not even summer’s opposite; it was merely that other place. And somehow one never remembered the journey towards it; one arrived, and winter was here. The day came suddenly when ll details were different and the village had to be rediscovered. One’s nose went dead so that it hurt to breathe, and there were jigsaws of frost on the window. The light filled the house with a green polar glow; while outside – in the invisible world – there was a strange hard silence, or a metallic creaking, a faint throbbing of twigs and wires.
Extracts from Letters from England Aspects of the Christmas season/an observation of winter weather in England by Robert Southey
2 January 1803 . . . I happened to sleep in the country when the first snow fell; and in the morning when I looked out of the window, everything was white, and the snowflakes like feathers floating and falling with as endless and ever varying motions as the dance of mosquitos on a summer evening. And this mockery of life was the only appearance of life; and indeed it seemed as if there could be nothing living in such a world. The trees were clothed like the earth, and every bough, branch and spray; except that side of the bark which had not been exposed to the wind, nothing was to be seen but was perfectly and dazzling white; and the evergreens in the garden were bent by the load. White mountains in the distance can give no idea of this singular effect. I was equally delighted with the incrustation upon the inside of the windows. Nothing which I have seen equals the exquisite beauty of this frost work.
Entries from the journal of the Somerset rector and antiquary John Skinner who towards the end of his life seemed to find the joyful bells something of a trial.
Thursday 25 December 1823
I cannot say my sleep was disturbed, but my waking hours certainly were by the ringing of bells around seven o’clock, announcing the joyous day, when half the parish at least will be drunk.
Tuesday 25 December 1827
I was awakened early by the ringing of the bells and could not help thinking how much sound overpowers common sense in all that we have to do in the present day. I lay awake last night thinking of these things, and soon after I had closed my eyes, they were opened again by the loud peals these thoughtless people among whom I dwell chose to ring, as they suppose, in honour of the day. They had better retire within themselves, and commune with their hearts, and be still.
Extract from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis
Lucy goes through the wardrobe . . .
“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!” thought Lucy going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. “I wonder is that more mothballs?” she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two further.
Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands were no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. “Why, it is just like the branches of trees!” exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree-trunks, she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out. (She had, of course, left the door open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe). It seemed to be still daylight there. “I can always get back if anything goes wrong,” thought Lucy. She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood to the other light. In about ten minutes she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming towards her. And soon after that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of the lamp-post.
He was only a little taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his head an umbrella, white with snow. From the waist upwards he was like a man, but his legs were shaped like a goat’s (the hair on them was glossy black) and instead of feet he had goat’s hoofs. He also had a tail, but Lucy did not notice this at first because it was neatly caught up over the arm that held the umbrella so as to keep it from trailing in the snow. He had a red woollen muffler found his neck, and his skin was rather reddish too. He had a strange, but pleasant little face, with a short pointed beard and curly hair, and out of the hair there stuck two horns, one on each side of his forehead. One of his hands, as I have said, held the umbrella; in the other arm he carried several brown-paper parcels. What with the parcels and the snow it looked just as if he had been doing his Christmas shopping. He was a Faun. And when he saw Lucy he gave such a start of surprise that he dropped all his parcels.
“Goodness gracious me!” exclaimed the Faun.
THE HOLLY AND THE IVY,
now both are full well grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
the holly bears the crown.
Oh, the rising of the sun
and the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
sweet singing in the choir.
The holly bears a blossom
as white as lily flower,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
to be our sweet saviour
Oh, the rising of the sun
and the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
sweet singing in the choir.
The holly bears a berry
as red as any blood,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
to do poor sinners good.
Oh, the rising of the sun
and the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
sweet singing in the choir.
The holly bears a prickle
as sharp as any thorn,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
on Christmas Day in the morn.
Oh, the rising of the sun
and the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
sweet singing in the choir.
The holly bears a bark
as bitter as any gall,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
for to redeem us all.
Oh, the rising of the sun
and the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
sweet singing in the choir.
FORECASTS
There are berries this year on the holly.
It wasn’t always so.
They may be simply a forecast –
forecast of snow.
There’s frost on the sill. I’ve seen it
glitter with diamond light.
It’s slippery, too, the traveller
must watch his step tonight.
There’s a moon as bit as a melon,
And far-off – O, how far –
flickering on the horizon . . .
a fresh, and different, star . . .
In the heart of man is a coldness
Through a crack in the stable door
there glimmers a new dominion.
Even ice can thaw.
By Jean Kenward
THE MISTLETOE BOUGH
A Gothic legend in rhyme, originally supposed to be an Italian tale, but it became associated with the Lovell family among others. In the early nineteenth century it was popular as a ghostly and romantic Christmas tale.
The Mistletoe hung from the castle walls,
The holly bough hung in the old oak hall
And the Baron’s retainers were blithe and gay,
All keeping their Christmas holiday.
The Baron beheld with a father’s pride
His beautiful child, young Lovell’s bride,
Whilst she, with her bright eyes seemed to be
The star of that goodly company.
‘I’m tired of dancing, my love’, she cried,
‘Here tarry a moment for me to hide.
And Lovell, be sure thou art first to trace
The clue to my secret hiding place’.
Away she ran and her friends began
Each tower to search, each vault to scan;
And young Lovell cried, ‘Oh where dost thou hide?
I long to find you, my own dear bride’.
They searched all that night, and they searched the next day,
They sought her in vain till a week pass’d away;
In the highest, the lowest, the loneliest spot,
Young Lovell sought wildly, and found her not;
And the years flew by and their grief at last
Was sung as a sorrowing tale of the past,
And when Lovell appeared, the children they cried
‘See, the old man still weeps for his own dear bride’.
One day an old chest that had long lain hid
Was found in the castle – they raised the lid
And a skeletal form lay a-mould’ring there
In the bridal wreath of a lady fair;
O, sad was her fate, in a Yuletide jest,
She hid from her Lord in an old oak chest.
It closed with a spring – what a dreadful doom
The bride lay clasped in an oaken tomb.
By Thomas Bayly
A POEM FOR CHRISTMAS
(written on Christmas Day)
How many hearts are happy at this hour
In England! Bright o’er the cheerful hall
Flares the heaped hearth, and friends and kindred meet,
And the glad mother round her festive board
Beholds her children, separated long.
Amid the world’s ways, assembled now,
A sight at which affection lightens up
With smiles, the eye that age has long bedimm’d.
I do remember when I was a child
How my young heart, a stranger then to care,
With transport leap’d upon this holyday,
As o’er the house, all gay with evergreens,
From friend to friend with joyful speed I ran,
Bidding a merry Christmas to them all.
By Robert Southey
Extract from Stoner by John Williams
Stoner reflects on his life
Once, late, after his evening class, he returned to his office and sat at his desk, trying to read. It was winter, and a snow had fallen during the day, so that the out-of-doors was covered with a white softness. The office was overheated; he opened a window beside the desk so that the cool air might come into the close room. He breathed deeply, and et his eyes wander over the white floor of the campus. On an impulse he switched out the light ion his desk and sat in the hot darkness of his office; the cold air filled his lungs, and he leaned toward the open window. He heard the silence of the winter night, and it seemed to him that he somehow felt the sounds that were absorbed by the delicate and intricately cellular being of the snow. Nothing moved upon the whiteness; it was a dead scene, which seemed to pull at him, to suck at his consciousness just as it pulled the sound from the air and buried it within a cold white softness. He felt himself pulled outward toward the whiteness, which spread as far as he could see, and which was a part of the darkness from which it glowed, of the clear and cloudless sky without height or depth. For an instant he felt himself go out of the body that sat motionless before the window; and as he felt himself slip away, everything – the flat whiteness, the trees, the tall columns, the night, the far stars – seemed incredibly tiny and far away as if they were dwindling to a nothingness. Then, behind him, a radiator clanked. He moved, and the scene became itself. With a curiously reluctant relief he again snapped on his desk lamp. He gathered a book and a few papers, went out of the office, walked through the darkened corridors, and let himself out of the wide double doors at the back of Jesse Hall. He walked slowly home, aware of each footstep crunching with muffled loudness in the dry snow.
WINTER SEASCAPE
The sea runs back against itself
With scarcely time for breaking wave
To cannonade a slatey shelf
And thunder under in a cave
Before the next can fully burst.
The headwind, blowing harder still,
Smooths it to what it was at first –
A slowly rolling water-hill.
Against the breeze the breakers haste,
Against the tide their ridges run
And all the sea’s a dappled waste
Criss-crossing underneath the sun.
Far down the beach the ripples drag
Blown backward, rearing from the shore,
And wailing gull and shrieking shag
Alone can pierce the ocean roar.
Unheard, a mongrel hound gives tongue,
Unheard are shouts of little boys:
What chance has any inland lung
Against this multi-water noise?
Here where the cliffs alone prevail
I stand exultant, neutral, free,
And from the cushion of the gale
Behold a huge consoling sea.
By John Betjeman
WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
By Christina Rossetti
WIND
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
By Ted Hughes
Sonnet 97:
How like a winter hath my absence been
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov'd was summer's time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me
But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
By William Shakespeare
SNOW IN THE SUBURBS
Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.
A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.
By Thomas Hardy
Suggested by Michael Spilberg
Extract from The Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Chapter 2: Winter Days and Winter Nights
The snow kept coming till it was drifted and banked against the house. In the mornings the window panes were covered with frost in beautiful pictures of trees and flowers and fairies.
Ma said that Jack Frost came in the night and made the pictures, while everyone was asleep. Laura thought that Jack Frost was a little man all in snowy white, wearing a glittering white pointed cap and soft white knee-boots made of deer-skin. His coat was white and his mittens were white, and he did not carry a gun on his back, but in his hands he had shining sharp tools with which he carved the pictures.
Laura and Mary were allowed to take Ma’s thimble and made pretty patterns of circles in the frost on the glass. But they never spoiled the pictures that Jack Frost had made in the night.
When they put their mouths close to the pane and blew their breath on it, the white frost melted and ran in drops down the glass. Then they could see the drifts of snow outdoors and the great trees standing bare and black, making thin blue shadows on the white snow.
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