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 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 seen an amusing parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions . It is a snow-battle of school-boys . What a pretty satire on war and military glory might be written , in the form of a child 's story , by describing the snowball-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 XXXXX fortresses , built all of massive snowblocks !
against amid at by in into like of over through