"How like a winter..."

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 removed was summer's time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered 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.

Shakespeare, Sonnet XCVII

How like a winter does this autumn last, as it blasts in, with the cold hatred of some primordial evil force, as some God of Winter, long forgotten and yet unwilling to be disobeyed, enshrouded in snowy winds that are his breath, his white mantle flustering minaciously as he draws near... And the days, they are drawing out, as if enfeebled to the last extent by the coming of darkness and King Frost, so that even at day-time the light of the sun is dim and wan, and dull; its fatigued shafts dying away in the realms of snow and clouds ere they are able to achieve us, the pale wraith of a sun suspended in an indefinite height, illumining it like a sepulchral candle, looking down glumly, like the face of a widow out-worn by woe.



But the snow! I confess that while this November dragged on, cold and black, my heart was filled with trepidation and anxiety for snow finally to fall down to stay, since scarcely is there a more oppressing phenomenon of Nature than black winter, when snowless, barren, the earth lies like a gigantic black monster, lidless, heavy, and malefic. In the frost, the earth needs snow like a frail child needs its blanket when sleeping. And the long-coveted snow having now fallen is one of the most propitious omens of a 'good' Russian winter to come, with its frosts and its ice, and its occasional thaws, and whatsoever is so much inherent in the stereotype. But colds and frosts we can withstand - nay! - we hail them, provided we have the white and gentle snow under out feet, as clouds that might be thought be some to lie underneath the bare feet of angels.