The following images were taken on my Android phone while out for a brisk , refreshing walk. A hospitable interlude from all the hustle and bustle of cleaning, baking, buying, making, wrapping madness. The plethora of Christmas prefatory measures that unfurl the 10 days before Christmas are known to many. I call them shenanigans that need to be chilled down with a breath of fresh air.
The Snow Storm
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whitened air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate, A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
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