Cold and Colder

Each successive day is the coldest yet. We have had freezing rain and light flurries--and some of the snow we received on 2 November is still with us. In the woods, the trees were laced with ice, and crystal shards continually clattered from the branches, falling like jewels onto the frozen leaves.

The low sun played weakly about the tops of the trees. It was still warm enough for the little stream to flow, though it was edged with ice.

Thin patches of cloud dimmed the sun, though now and then the sky cleared and showed itself intensely blue. I stumbled across what must be an early use of the phrase "by hooke or crooke": Faerie Queene 3.1.17. It is said of the Foster who chases Florimell through the woods. "Might and maine"turns up a few stanzas later (20). I was struck by the failure of the third book to give any indication of the season. There is a reference to singing birds, but that is in the Castle Joyous, and they may be caged. Perhaps the seasons did not matter as much in Ireland, where Spenser wrote the early books. Here, the season determines everything from the colour of the sky to the feel of the wind on your face. Gawain and the Green Knight is also a highly symbolic poem, but the winter weather is strikingly evoked--perhaps the West Midlands, being about as continental as one can get in Britain, had a climate more marked by contrasts than did Ireland.

It is now the end of the week, and the temperature has fallen to -12.5. Nothing is flowing; the pools of water under the uprooted trees have frozen to the bottom. It is winter once more.