Comes in the New Year and gales. Now the world whitens with strong blizzards. The winds fall, the sun is too bright to look at, and the shadows of the straight white birch lie blue and curved along the domed drifts. The outer islands show like cubes of sugar on the blue-black of the bold Atlantic. But the upper bays are white, and the corded wood comes home from the islands on sleds. The horses' breaths float like plumes on each side. Now the old man hugs the stove, but the small boy's seat is brave with partly-colored patches from his brother and his father; he goes ramping down the hill on his sled and kicks up diamonds with his glad toes. The big boy will have no part of sliding but sandpapers the oars to his boat like a man.
The only birds are the splinters of diamond-and-jet which cry chick-a-dee-dee, sharp as needles among the pines. The Arctic owl is inquiring for mice at midnight. The wife heats the corn and runs to the henhouse with the hot pan in her apron. The fox leaves a line of dimples as he trots through the snowy woods, the mice leave a featherstitching, and the cuneiforms around the dead stump tell where the ruffed partridge has been to his dinner. The only berries are the red rose hips, and the crinkle-tipped boxberries hang over the jet trickle of water below the arch of snow. The winds have an edge like a whet knife, and a sad song hangs around the chimney. It gets darker later each evening.
As the days grow longer The cold grows stronger.
The thermometer falls below zero, the high moon blazes like noon, and the lonesome white bays crack for pain of the cold. Honeybees crawl to new combs and warm themselves in the hive at the heat of last summer's sun. The stars snap like sapphires, you hear the hiss of their burning, and the teapot hisses continuously on the back of the stove. The barrel of quahaugs in the cellar is halfway down.
The January thaw comes, it slushes up and rains. For a spider has crawled out of his corner, as the old man notes, and it has moderated suddenly, with the mercury climbing red in the glass. The small boy's nose is as scarlet as rose hips as he snuffles with his feet in hot water and mustard by the fire. Aquarius is the sign, and he turns out a blue-flowered, five-gallon jug on every last hillside.
The world hardens up in a night and turns to pure glass. The only flowers are the icicles on the eaves and the beads on each twig. The sun jumps out of the Atlantic, a man goes out into a world that is a single cut diamond. Forests and mountains are too bright to look at with wide-open eyes. The night blazes with thousands of stars tangled into every tree. The only fish now are the silver shavings of smelts. It blossoms small, white houses up and down the hard, white creeks, and big men crouch over little lanterns burning at noonday and pull up the smelts through the hole in the floor.
The pine needles hug together, and the dark color of them, the old man says, foretells a coming storm. The woodchuck sleeps in his burrow, with never a whimper, and the hound dog bays the white-circled moon. Grandpa sees three stars inside the moon's circle, so the storm is three days away. Sure enough, the stars were right; a great fall of snow buries the bays and houses on the third day. The farmer oils up his harnesses. He shovels a canyon to the boathouse for a single hammer he needs.
Now the woodshed hums. The father works with smoking breath on the oak keel of his new boat, and the bright-eyed boy watches and holds things with shavings in his yellow hair. No such bright days and nights ever as now. The earth runs emerald and gold and silver, for now the year is afire with January, and life is tip-a-toe. The cows stand all day in golden straw, and their breath smokes up the tie-up. The little girls cut out strings of paper dolls with joined hands. A haymow is a joy to smell on a cold afternoon. The small boy lies by his boy-friend and whispers tremendous secrets in the hay. The farmer's wife runs up a mince pie and marks a flock of spring geese across it with a silver knife and slips it into the oven.
An old book is a good dish for a long night. Grandfather thumbs the Old Farmer's Almanac as he sits on the woodbox back of the stove. There will be plenty more snow. The little dog lies under the cookstove and bakes himself through like a biscuit. The young boy smells the newsprint of the Boston Transcript around the hot brick that warms his toes in bed. It snows two feet. The farmer knits a lobster- head as he sits with his stocking feet in the oven, which still smells of mince pie. The keel is finished in the wood-shed. It snows three feet. Grandmother's needles fly, and a mountain of socks is rising by her Boston rocker. The young man breaks the axe-helve by striking over the beech chopping-block, but it is because his mind is full of a tall girl with tight braids. The big boy tries chewing tobacco when Grandpa is not looking to his plug.
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