Thus gradually , by silent and stealthy influences , are great changes wrought . These little snow-particles , which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air , will bury the great earth under their accumulated mass , nor permit her to behold her sister sky again for dreary months . We , likewise , shall lose sight of our mother 's familiar visage , and must content ourselves with looking heavenward the oftener . Now , leaving the storm to do his appointed office , let us sit down , pen in hand , by our fireside . Gloomy as it may seem , there is an influence productive of cheerfulness , and favorable to imaginative thought , in the atmosphere of a snowy day . The native of a southern clime may woo the muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage , reclining on banks of turf , while the sound of singing birds and warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul . In our brief summer , I do not think , but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a dream . My hour of inspiration -- if that hour ever comes -- is when the green log hisses upon the hearth , and the bright flame , brighter for the gloom of the chamber , rustles high up the chimney , and the coals drop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes . When the casement rattles in the gust , and the snow-flakes or the sleety raindrops pelt hard against the window-panes , then I spread out my sheet of paper , with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it , like stars at twilight , or like violets in May , -- perhaps to fade as soon . However transitory their glow , they at least shine amid the darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through the room . Blessed , therefore , and reverently welcomed by me , her true-born son , be New England 's winter , which makes us , one and all , the nurslings of the storm , and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriek of the December blast . Now look we forth again , and see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done . Slow and sure ! He has the day , perchance the week , before him , and may take his own time to accomplish Nature 's burial in snow . A smooth mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat , and the dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white surface in all parts of the garden . The leafless rose-bushes stand shivering in a shallow snow-drift , looking , poor things ! as disconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary scene . This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with the summer ; they neither live nor die ; what they retain of life seems but the chilling sense of death . Very sad are the flower shrubs in midwinter ! The roofs of the houses are now all white , save where the eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners .
To discern the real intensity of the XXXXX , we must fix upon some distant object , -- as yonder spire,-and observe how the riotous gust fights with the descending snow throughout the intervening space .
England annuals casement clime midwinter nurslings snow-drift snow-particles storm window-panes