p. 103 | The Beauty of Winter

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 12, 1872

The Beauty of Winter.

THE beautiful aspects of nature are not limited to times and seasons. This would be a strange world if the revolving year clothed it now with grace and then again with ugliness. Winter, to those whose frames are in harmony with it, is neither sullen nor repulsive. The cold gray of its clouds, the somber hue of its earth, and the dimmed brightness of its brief days, have a charm of their own. The colors of the universe are toned down, but the reverent eye can detect the touches of the divine Artist still. The keen air of winter is more resonant than the moisture-laden atmosphere of summer; the sense of hearing grows more acute, and sounds which, in other seasons, would be dull thuds, in winter bring echoes. The chords of nature are strung to their utmost tension, and every one rings out melody.

Perhaps to this fact of nature is due the musicalness of winter winds. Dwellers in cities, where houses in long rows shelter each other, know little or nothing of this weird music. The winter wind, as it sweeps round the country house—now sobbing like a fretful child, now dying away with a long sigh, now coming on ten thousand strong, with a whistle and a whir, as if it would storm its way in-doors—creates the feeling that the whole mid-region of air is vital, and endowed with semi-intelligence. One is now and then startled with sounds that almost resemble human calls. To the lover of the beautiful, such sounds are but strains from nature's great orchestra, which never cease their outpouring of melody, though the melody falls for most part on inattentive ears.

But the eye is not left in winter unblessed by sweet visions. The glinting of the sunbeams through the bare and blackened branches of the forest, all the poets love to celebrate. The cloud formations follow each other so rapidly that there is a constant change in the tone of the landscape. And as we are made to be affected by the aspects of nature, we find our feelings played upon with a power which it is impossible to resist. Our sensibilities are toned down with the subdued coloring of the outer world. Occasionally, however, there comes to us in the midst of winter, with the south-west wind, a return of mellow October. We see all things in the golden mist once more; the haze gathers again upon the horizon, and at sunset is burnished until it is all aflame. Such days we have had since the beginning of our new year, and they make our winter inexpressibly lovely. If the lesson of summer is gentleness, the lesson of winter is force. The winter is not dark; it is brightness relieved of the glare, which, if not suspended for a time, would become painful.—The Methodist.