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 snowdrift , 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 storm , 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 . Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured ; then , again , we have a distinct but transient glimpse of the tall steeple , like a giant 's ghost ; and now the dense wreaths sweep between , as if demons were flinging snowdrifts at each other in mid-air . Look next into the street , where we have an amusing parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions . It is a snow-battle of schoolboys . What a pretty satire on war and military glory might be written in the form of a child 's story by describing the snow-ball fights of two rival schools , the alternate defeats and victories of each , and the final triumph of one party , or perhaps of neither ! What pitched battles worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains ! What storming of fortresses built all of massive snow-blocks ! What feats of individual prowess and embodied onsets of martial enthusiasm !
And when some well-contested and decisive victory had put a period to the XXXXX , both armies should unite to build a lofty monument of snow upon the battlefield and crown it with the victor 's statue hewn of the same frozen marble .
Blessed rose-bushes snow-ball snow-battle snow-blocks snowdrift snowdrifts storm storm-spirit war