A Book of the Seasons: December 7

December 7, 2014

. 

December 7.

So moderate and
so simple is the Winter
so sweet and wholesome.

A perfect poem --
epic in blank verse with a
million tinkling rhymes.

That grand old poem
called Winter is round again
as fast as snowflakes.

It was summer and
now again it is Winter --
Nature loves this rhyme.

Nature loves this rhyme
so well that she never tires
of repeating it.

December 7, 1856

December 7.

It was Summer and 

now again it is Winter. 

Nature loves this rhyme.

As fast as snowflakes

that old poem called Winter

is come round again.

It was Summer and 

now again it is Winter.

as fast as snowflakes.

As fast as snowflakes

summer was, now winter is.

Nature loves this rhyme.

Nature loves this rhyme

so well that she never tires

of repeating it.

That old poem called 

Winter is come round again.

It is wonderful 
that old men do not lose 
their reckoning.

December 7, 1856

So sweet and wholesome  

so simple and moderate

such solid beauty

epic in blank verse

with a million tinkling rhymes.

Winter.What a poem!

As fast as snowflakes

that old poem called Winter

is come round again.

December 7, 1856

 The winters come now

as fast as snowflakes. Summer

was, now winter is.

December 7, 1856

That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine. As I sit under Lee's Cliff, where the snow is melted, amid sere pennyroyal and frost-bitten catnep, I look over my shoulder upon an arctic scene. 

I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow, just as so many winters before, where so lately were lapsing waves or smooth reflecting water. 

I see the holes which the pickerel-fisher has made, and I see him, too, retreating over the hills, drawing his sled behind him. The water is already skimmed over again there. I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of the pond. 

It seemed as if winter had come without any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to see it flit away by the time I again looked over my shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it. 

But I see that the farmers have had time to gather their harvests as usual, and the seasons have revolved as slowly as in the first autumn of my life. 

The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It is wonderful that old men do not lose their reckoning. It was summer, and now again it is winter. Nature loves this rhyme so well that she never tires of repeating it. 

So sweet and wholesome is the winter, so simple and moderate, so satisfactory and perfect, that her children will never weary of it. What a poem! an epic in blank verse, enriched with a million tinkling rhymes. It is solid beauty

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2020