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 war , 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 . In a few days or weeks thereafter the passer-by would observe a shapeless mound upon the level common , and , unmindful of the famous victory , would ask , `` How came it there ? Who reared it ? And what means it ? '' The shattered pedestal of many a battle-monument has provoked these questions when none could answer .
Turn we again to the fireside and sit musing there , lending our ears XXXXX the wind till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice and dictate wild and airy matter for the pen .
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