The former--the graces which are peculiar to the season itself--exist in many a natural aspect and grotesque effect, which is striking both for the variety it offers and for its own intrinsic loveliness.
"We may find it in the wintry boughs, as they cross the cold blue sky, While soft on icy pool and stream the pencilled shadows lie, When we look upon their tracery, by the fairy frost-work bound, Whence the flitting red-breast shakes a shower of blossoms to the ground."
The white mantle which the earth occasionally puts on with the rapidity of a spell, covering, in the course of a night and while we have slept, the familiar forms with a sort of strangeness that makes us feel as if we had awakened in some new and enchanted land; the fantastic forms assumed by the drifting snow; the wild and fanciful sketching of old winter upon the "frosty pane;" the icicles that depend like stalactites from every projection, and sparkle in the sun like jewels of the most brilliant water; and, above all, the feathery investiture of the trees above alluded to, by which their minute tracery is brought out with a richness shaming the carving of the finest chisel,--are amongst the features which exhibit the inexhaustible fertility of Nature in the production of striking and beautiful effects. Hear how one of our best poetesses, Mary Howitt, sings of these graces:--
"One silent night hath passed, and lo, How beautiful the earth is now! All aspect of decay is gone, The hills have put their vesture on, And clothed is the forest bough.
"Say not 'tis an unlovely time! Turn to the wide, white waste thy view; Turn to the silent hills that rise In their cold beauty to the skies, And to those skies intensely blue.
"Walk now among the forest trees: Saidst thou that they were stripped and bare? Each heavy bough is bending down With snowy leaves and flowers,--the crown Which Winter regally doth wear.
"'Tis well; thy summer garden ne'er Was lovelier, with its birds and flowers, Than is this silent place of snow, With feathery branches drooping low, Wreathing around thee shadowy bowers!"
While on the subject of the natural beauties of this season, we must introduce our readers to some admirable verses which have been furnished to us by our friend Mr. Stoddart, the author of that fine poem the "Death-Wake," and in which its peculiar aspects are described with a very graphic pen: