. . . . . . . For lo! the fiery horses of the Sun Through the twelve signs their rapid course have run; Time, like a serpent, bites his forked tail, And Winter, on a goat, bestrides the gale; Rough blows the North-wind near Arcturus' star, And sweeps, unreined, across the polar bar." The halcyon days, which sometimes extend their southern influence even to our stern climate, and carry an interval of gloomy calm into the heart of this dreary month, have generally ere its close given place to the nipping frosts and chilling blasts of mid-winter. "Out of the South" hath come "the whirlwind, and cold out of the North." The days have dwindled to their smallest stature, and the long nights, with their atmosphere of mist, shut in and circumscribe the wanderings of man. Clouds and shadows surround us. The air has lost its rich echoes, and the earth its diversified aspects; and to the immediate threshold of the house of feasting and merriment we have travelled through those dreary days which are emphatically called "the dark days before Christmas." Of one of the gloomy mornings that usher in these melancholy days Ben Jonson gives the following dismal description:-- "It is, methinks, a morning full of fate! It riseth slowly, as her sullen car Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it! She is not rosy-fingered, but swoln black! Her face is like a water turned to blood, And her sick head is bound about with clouds, As if she threatened night, ere noon of day! It does not look as it would have a hail Or health wished in it--as of other morns!" And the general discomforts of the season are bemoaned by old Sackville, with words that have a wintry sound, in the following passage, which we extract from "England's Parnassus:"-- "The wrathfull winter, proching on a pace, With blustring blast had all ybard the treene; And old Saturnus, with his frosty face, With chilling cold had pearst the tender greene; The mantle rent wherein inwrapped beene The gladsome groves that now lay over-throwne, The tapers torne, and every tree downe blowne; The soyle, that erst so seemely was to seeme, Was all dispoiled of her beauties hewe, And stole fresh flowers (wherewith the Somer's queene Had clad the earth), now Boreas blast downe blew; And small fowles flocking, in their songs did rew The Winter's wrath, where with each thing defast, In wofull wise bewayl'd the Sommer past: Hawthorne had lost his motley liverie, The naked twigs were shivering all for cold, And, dropping down the teares aboundantlie, Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told The cruell season, bidding me withhold Myselfe within."