The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1876-12-15


/ Who watch and ward the living
And bury all the dead.
All! by their side at Chrisfmas-tide
The Lord Of Christmas stands;
He smooths thu burrows from their brow
| With strong and tender hands.
| Il take my Christmas gift, he saith,
From thee, tired sotl, and he
| Who giveth TO my little ones
Gives also unto nell"
! Another of our welcome winter puest
is Happy New Year, brought in like |,
smiling baby in its white christening
robes, to be tossed about from one K
another with good wishes and feastins
and laughter. You might fill many vol
umes with the poetry that has been writ
ten about the New Year.
But the wonder and beauty of white,
itself are what the poets of the NORTH
have loved to show.
We sometimes think of winter as the
most unpoetic among the seasons; but
there is different way of looking at it.
The snow is blank sheet to some eyes,
but not to all A fresh snow-drift is
often nodded like the most exquisite
sculpture, and its waves and lines and
shadows are JOY to artistic eyes. The
tints it reveals in the sunset rays are
purer than any color we know, and sug-
gest the light that may shine upon us in
some lovelier world which we have not
yet seen.
And the falling of the snow-how del
icate and dreamy it is F! There are poems
through which it seems to glide as airily
as it descends from the sky itself.
How strange it must seem to live in a
country where snow never comes The
natives of such countries will not be-
ieve the frosty and icy stories told them
by travellers from colder regions.
Stranger still it must seem to them
when, at long intervals, they are visited
by snow-storm.
Bruce, the African traveller, tells us
that an aged Abyssinian once drew him
aside, to tell him, as great wonder,
that when he was n young man some
thing white one day descended from the
sky, covering the earth, and disappear.
ing as silently as it camH. Some one
has very prettily versified this story of
SNOW IN A3YssISIA.
Bruce of Kinnaird could scarce repress the smile
That twiiched the bearded ambush of his mouth,
When, in his quest of the mysterious Nile,
Amid the perlous wilds of the swart south,
Which made his chid-like wonder almost grand,
How, in his youth, there fell from out the skies
feathery Wilderness over all three land
A strange, SOFT epotless something, pure light,
For which their questioned Language had no name,
That shone and sparklea for day and night,
Then vanished all as weirdly as it came.
Leaving no vestige, CLEAN, or hue, or scent
On the round hills or in the purple air,
To satisfy their mute bewilderment
That such presence had indeed been there"
And you may have read of the little
Barbados girl who, when she came to q
northern country, and saw the snow fall
ing for the first time, cried out that the
angels were emptying their feather-beds
upon the earth /!
When the north wind sets our teeth
chattering, and pierces us with needles
of frost, we sigh for a climate where
summer is perpetual. Yet no-not "we"
exactly; for there is nothing that a
healthy child delights in more than the
wild, stormy mirth that winter brings.
Every season has beauty of its own,
and the poets usually find it out for us,
or else show us that there is poetry of
the gloomy and terrible as we'll as of the
beautiful. So Cowper says:
"Oh, winter ruler of the inverted year.
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filed,
Thy breath CONCEALED upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fringed with beard made white with other SHOWS
Than those OF age thy forehead wrapped in clouds,
leaness branch thy scepter, and thy throne
sliding car. indebted TO no wheels,
But urged by storms along its slippery way
love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,
And dreaded as thou art"
But we come back, in spite of our at
tempt to look on the dark side, to the
brightness and jollity of the winter
months.
Now, children, which season is pleas
antest-which has most poetry in it ?
This is so hard question to answer, it
must be settled by leaving it open on all
sides, as it is here, i'll "Marjorie's A.
manac," by Aldrich:
"Robins in the tree-top,
Blossoms in the grass,
Green things a-grCwing
Everywhere you pass:
Sudden little breezes,
Showers OF silver dew,
Black bough and bent twig
Budding out anew;
Pine-tree and wlllow-tree,
Fringed elm and larch-
Don't you think that Magazines
Pleasanter than March?
"Applee in the orchard
Mellowing one by one;
Strawberries upturnng
Soft checks to the sun;
Roses faint with sweetness,
Lilies fair of face,
Drowsy scents and murmurs
Haunting every place;
Lengths of golden sunshine,
Moonlight bright as day
Don't you think that summers
Pessanter than May?
Roger in the corn-patch,
Whistling negro songs
Pussy by the hearth-side,
Romping with the tongs;
Chestnuts in the ashes,
Bursting through the rsnd;
Red leaf and gold leaf
Rustling down the wind
Mother " dom peaches "
All the afternoon
Don't you think that autumn's
Pleasanter than June?
Little fairy snow-nakes
Dancing in the hue;
Old Mr. Santa Claus,
What ~ keeping YOU?
Twilight and nreight
Shadows come aud 20: