#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/12/20 -- Winter's Arrival

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 3, No. 8: December 20, 2023

 

 

A Garland of Poems for the Winter Solstice

Thursday, December 21, 2023 @ 9:27 PM (CST)

 

“The Four Seasons of the Year: Winter”

By Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

 

Cold, moist, young phlegmy winter now doth lie

In swaddling Clothes, like newborn Infancy

Bound up with frosts, and furred with hail & snows,

And like an Infant, still it taller grows;

December is my first, and now the Sun

To the Southward Tropic, his swift race doth run:

This month he's housed in horned Capricorn,

From thence he 'gins to length the shortened morn,

Through Christendom with great Festivity,

Now's held, (but guest) for blest Nativity.

Cold frozen January next comes in,

Chilling the blood and shrinking up the skin;

In Aquarius now keeps the long-wished Sun,

And Northward his unwearied Course doth run:

The day much longer than it was before,

The cold not lessened, but augmented more.

Now Toes and Ears, and Fingers often freeze,

And Travelers their noses sometimes leese.

Moist snowy February is my last,

I care not how the wintertime doth haste.

In Pisces now the golden Sun doth shine,

And Northward still approaches to the Line,

The Rivers 'gin to open, the snows to melt,

And some warm glances from his face are felt;

Which is increased by the lengthened day,

Until by his heat, he drive all cold away,

And thus the year in Circle runneth round:

Where first it did begin, in the end its found.

My Subject’s bare, my Brain is bad,

Or better Lines you should have had:

The first fell in so naturally,

I knew not how to pass it by;

The last, though bad I could not mend,

Accept therefore of what is penned,

And all the faults that you shall spy

Shall at your feet for pardon cry.

 

Orphic Hymn #79: “To Boreas, the North Wind”

Translated by Thomas Taylor (1758-1835)

Boreas, whose wintry blasts, terrific, tear

The bosom of the deep surrounding air;

Cold icy power, approach, and favoring blow,

And Thrace a while desert exposed to snow:

The misty station of the air dissolve,

With pregnant clouds, whose frames in showers resolve:

Serenely temper all within the sky,

And wipe from moisture, Aether's beauteous eye.

 

“Hymn to the North Star”

By William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)

 

The sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;

The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires:

All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and round the heavens, and go.

 

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:

Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,

Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

 

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.

Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keeps thy old unmoving station yet,

Nor joins the dances of that glittering train,

Nor dips thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

 

There, at morn’s rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

And eve, that round the Earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls

The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven’s azure walls.

 

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze — the smoke of battle blots the Sun —

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud —

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

 

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

 

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,

That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

 

Polaris, the North Star, is always positioned overhead at the Earth’s North Pole. (Photo Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute – Public Domain)

 

“Woods in Winter”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

When winter winds are piercing chill,

  And through the hawthorn blows the gale,

With solemn feet I tread the hill,

  That overbrows the lonely vale.

 

O'er the bare upland, and away

  Through the long reach of desert woods,

The embracing sunbeams chastely play,

  And gladden these deep solitudes.

 

Where, twisted round the barren oak,

  The summer vine in beauty clung,

And summer winds the stillness broke,

  The crystal icicle is hung.

 

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs

  Pour out the river's gradual tide,

Shrilly the skater's iron rings,

  And voices fill the woodland side.

 

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,

  When birds sang out their mellow lay,

And winds were soft, and woods were green,

  And the song ceased not with the day!

 

But still wild music is abroad,

  Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;

And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,

  Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

 

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear

  Has grown familiar with your song;

I hear it in the opening year,

  I listen, and it cheers me long.

 

“Songs of Winter Days: IV”

By George MacDonald (1824-1905)

 

A morning clear, with frosty light

From sunbeams late and low;

They shine upon the snow so white,

And shine back from the snow.

 

Down tusks of ice one drop will go,

Nor fall: at sunny noon

‘Twill hang a diamond-fade, and grow

An opal for the Moon.

 

And when the bright sad Sun is low

Behind the mountain-dome,

A twilight wind will come and blow

Around the children’s home,

 

And puff and waft the powdery snow,

As feet unseen did pass;

While, waiting in its bed below,

Green lies the summer grass.

 

“A Calendar of Sonnets: December”

By Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

 

The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes

Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed:

Far fairer than when placidly it streamed,

The brook its frozen architecture makes,

And under bridges white its swift way takes.

Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed

Might linger on the road; or one who deemed

His message hostile gently for their sakes

Who listened might reveal it by degrees.

We gird against the cold of winter wind

Our loins now with mighty bands of sleep,

In longest, darkest nights take rest and ease,

And every shortening day, as shadows creep

O'er the brief noontide, fresh surprises find.

 

 

Saturnalia (December 17-23) was the ancient Roman celebration of the winter solstice. This photo of the planet Saturn was taken in July 2008 by the Cassini space probe. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Saturnalia”

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

 

From Morvin’s Mead to Arcady

Let bays the temple columns twine,

Whilst wreathed throngs relax in glee,

And tapers through the darkness shine;

For every frosty star above

Prophetic spreads its twinkling beams,

To cheer the dismal wintry grove

With golden showers of vernal dreams.