As time goes by, I've learned to befriend winter, and appreciate her beauty. Winter is as temperamental as a woman; at times, raging and battering us with her sleeted icy fingers; at times, blowing us kisses with her gentle snowflakes that spiral down in a dance of graceful silence, to melt upon our faces. She gives us ample opportunity to pause and turn inwards, to examine our thoughts and to be introspective. She offers us nights near a blazing fire, wrapped in a blanket, with nothing but a cup of tea and a good book for company. She makes us pause and examine our lives, so that we may consider all that we have sowed, and that which we have yet to sow and reap. As you settle into January, take time to enjoy those moments of solitude that is winter's gift to us.
(All images from Pinterest, for credits - please check my Pinterest board here and click through the image to its orginating website).
Brew me a cup for a winter's night, For the wind howls loud and the fairies fight; Spice it with love and stir it with care, And I'll toast our bright eyes, my sweetheart fair. -Minna Thomas Antrim
"When he spoke, what tender words he used! So softly, that like flakes of feathered snow, they melted as they fell." -John Dryden
Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
~Bill Morgan, Jr.
The snow-drop, who, in habit white and plain, Comes on the herald of fair Flora's train. -Charles Churchill
Lo, sifted through the winds that blow, Down comes the soft and silent snow, White petals from the flowers that grow In the cold atmosphere. -George W. Bungay
It doesn't matter. I'm not asking forever of you...just let me love you now. -The Snow Queen (Joan Vinge)
Nature looks dead in winter because her life is gathered into her heart. She withers the plant down to the root that she may grow it up again fairer and stronger. She calls her family together within her inmost home to prepare them for being scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. -Hugh Macmillan, "Rejuvenescence," The Ministry of Nature, 1871
Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
~Charles Kingsley
Of winter's lifeless world each tree
Now seems a perfect part;
Yet each one holds summer's secret
Deep down within its heart.
~Charles G. Stater
There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In
spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each
other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet
stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers....
~Thomas Campion, "Winter Nights"
Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. ~Edith Sitwell
Welcome, winter. Your late dawns and chilled breath make me lazy, but I love you nonetheless. ~Terri Guillemets
