A GOOD-BY TO WINTER

 Winter is not quite done, but it will be by the time this “Clerk” is printed. That is to say, my winter will be done. In this respect, as in many others, I am a conservative. My calendar is of the old school. “There are four seasons in the year—spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter.” So we began our school compositions; and by “spring” we meant the spring months—March, April, and May. The temperature might belie¹ the almanac; there might be “six weeks’ sledding in March;” but when March began, spring began.

 

And by the way, what a capital subject that was—“The Seasons”! A theme without beginning and without end; a theme to be taken seriously or humorously, in prose or verse; a theme of universal interest. Best of all, there was no difficulty about the first sentence. No need to sit for half an hour chewing the end of one’s pencil and waiting for inspiration. Down it went: “There are four seasons in the year—spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter.” We never omitted to say “autumn or fall;” the synonymy helped out the page, and gave us the more time in which to consider what we should say next. That is the great difficulty in authorship. On that shoal many a good ship has struck. A man who always has something to say next is bound to get on—as a “space writer,” if as nothing else.

 

Our opening remark was not strictly² original, but we did not mind. It was true, if it wasn’t new; and without being told, I think we had discovered—by intuition, I suppose—what older heads seem to have learned by rule, that it is good rhetoric³, so to speak, to begin with a quotation⁴. I was pleased, the other day, to see a brilliant essayist commending it as an excellent and becoming practice to leapfrog into one’s subject over the back of some famous predecessor⁵. Such was our custom, for better or worse, till a certain master (I am tempted⁶ to name him, but forbear) announced just before the fatal day, that compositions on “The Seasons” would no longer be accepted. That was cruelty to authors. He spoke⁷ with a smile, but it was a smile of malice⁸. I have never forgiven him. He is living still, a preacher of the gospel. When Saturday night comes, and he finds himself hard put to it for the morrow’s sermon (as I have no doubt he often does—I hope so, at all events), does he never remember the day when with the word of his mouth he deprived thirty or forty young innocents of their easiest and best appreciated text? He is righteously punished. Let him preach to himself, some Sunday, from Numbers xxxii. 23, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”

 

Why shouldn’t one write about the seasons, I wonder. There is scarcely anything more important, or more universally interesting, than the weather. Ten to one it was the first thing we all thought of this morning. And the seasons are nothing but weather in large packages—weather at wholesale⁹. Their changes are our epochs, our date-points. But for them, all days being alike, there would be no calendar. It[215] is well known that people who live in the tropics seldom know their own age. How should they, with nothing to distinguish one time of year from another? Young or old, they have never learned that “there are four seasons in the year.”

 

We are better off. Life with us is not all in the present tense. As Hamlet said, we look before and after. (Hence it is, I suppose, that we have “such large discourse,” and continue, some of us, to write compositions.) We live by expectation. “Behold,” says the weather, “I make all things new.” Every day is another one, and every season also. At this very minute a miraculous¹⁰ change is at hand. A great and effectual door is about to swing on its hinges, and I, for one, wish to be awake to see it; not to wake up by and by and find the door wide open.

 

So far from wearying of the seasons as an old story, I am more intensely interested in them than ever. If any of my fellow citizens are not just now thinking daily of the passing of winter and the advent¹¹ of spring, I should like to know what they are made[216] of. For myself, I am like a man in jail. My term is about to expire, and I am notching¹² off the days one by one on a stick. “Three more,” say I; “two more.” “Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.” And I am ready to hang my cap on the horns of the moon.

 

“You are too much in haste,” some man will say; the same that said, “How are the dead raised up?” But I know better. It is one happy effect of ornithological¹³ habits that they shorten the winter. There will be no spring flowers for a good while yet, but there will be spring birds within a fortnight, perhaps within a week; nay¹⁴, there may be some before night. Indeed, I have just come in from a two-hour jaunt¹⁵, and at almost every step my ears were open for the first vernal note. I have seen bluebirds, before now, earlier than this; and what has happened once may happen again. So, while the wind blew softly from the southwest, and all the hills were mantled¹⁶ with a dreamy haze¹⁷, I chose a course that would take me past one apple orchard¹⁸ after another; and, as I say, my ears (which I often think are better ornithologists than their owner,—if he is their owner) kept themselves wide awake. If that sweet voice, “Purity, purity” (with all bird lovers I thank Mr. Burroughs for the word)—if that heavenly voice, the gentlest of prophets, was on the breeze, they meant to hear it.

 

They heard nothing, but that is not to say that they listened to no purpose. They heard nothing, and they heard much; for there is an ear within the ear, and the new year’s voice—which is the bluebird’s—was in the deepest and truest sense already audible. The ornithologist¹⁹ failed to catch it; for him Sialia sialis is still to look for; but the other man was in better luck.

 

The “new year’s voice,” I say; for the year begins with spring. We had the seasons in their true order when we were school-children—“spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter.” It must have been some very old and prosy chronologist that arranged their progression as our almanacs now give it. The young are better instructed. Does not the Scripture²⁰ say, “The last shall be first”?

 

And within three days—I can hardly believe it—the old year will be done. So let it be. Its passing brings us so much nearer the grave; worse yet, perhaps, it leaves us with our winter’s work half accomplished²¹; but our eyes are forward. After all, our work is not important. We are twice too busy; living as our neighbors do, rather than according to the law of our own being; playing the fool (there is no fool like the busy one); selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. The great thing, especially in springtime, is to lie wide open to the life that enfolds us, while the “gentle deities” show us, for our delight,—

 

“The lore²² of colors and of sounds,

The innumerable tenements²³ of beauty.”

Yes, that is the wisdom we should pray for. The youngest of us will not see many springs. Let us see the most that we can of this one. So much there will be to look at! Now, of all times, we may say with one of old, “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” What a new world we should find ourselves living in! I can hardly imagine it.

1 belie   

v.掩饰，证明为假

参考例句：

• The gentle lower slopes belie the true nature of the mountain.低缓的山坡掩盖了这座山的真实特点。
• His clothes belie his station.他的衣服掩饰了他的身分。

2 strictly   

adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地

参考例句：

• His doctor is dieting him strictly.他的医生严格规定他的饮食。
• The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence.客人严格按照地位高低就座。

3 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

4 quotation   

n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情

参考例句：

• He finished his speech with a quotation from Shakespeare.他讲话结束时引用了莎士比亚的语录。
• The quotation is omitted here.此处引文从略。

5 predecessor   

n.前辈，前任

参考例句：

• It will share the fate of its predecessor.它将遭受与前者同样的命运。
• The new ambassador is more mature than his predecessor.新大使比他的前任更成熟一些。

6 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

7 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

8 malice   

n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋

参考例句：

• I detected a suggestion of malice in his remarks.我觉察出他说的话略带恶意。
• There was a strong current of malice in many of his portraits.他的许多肖像画中都透着一股强烈的怨恨。

9 wholesale   

n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售

参考例句：

• The retail dealer buys at wholesale and sells at retail.零售商批发购进货物，以零售价卖出。
• Such shoes usually wholesale for much less.这种鞋批发出售通常要便宜得多。

10 miraculous   

adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的

参考例句：

• The wounded man made a miraculous recovery.伤员奇迹般地痊愈了。
• They won a miraculous victory over much stronger enemy.他们战胜了远比自己强大的敌人，赢得了非凡的胜利。

11 advent   

n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临

参考例句：

• Swallows come by groups at the advent of spring. 春天来临时燕子成群飞来。
• The advent of the Euro will redefine Europe.欧元的出现将重新定义欧洲。

12 notching   

adj.多级的（指继电器）n.做凹口，开槽v.在（某物）上刻V形痕( notch的现在分词 )；赢得；赢取；获得高分

参考例句：

• Results are very linear and free from phase notching. 结果非常线性，没有相位凹口。 来自互联网
• This means that the system only improves, always notching forward, never backsliding. 这意味着系统只能够被改进，总是向前的，从不会倒退。 来自互联网

13 ornithological   

adj.鸟类学的

参考例句：

• Is there an ornithological reason for keeping them in separate cages? 用独立的笼子养鸟，有什么鸟类学的原因吗？ 来自电影对白
• Mere amateurs in 2009 will make ornithological history in China by discovering birds unknown to science. 在即将来临的2009年里，中国鸟类学史大概会由不打眼的业余人士通过发现未知的鸟类而刷新。 来自互联网

14 nay   

adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者

参考例句：

• He was grateful for and proud of his son's remarkable,nay,unique performance.他为儿子出色的，不，应该是独一无二的表演心怀感激和骄傲。
• Long essays,nay,whole books have been written on this.许多长篇大论的文章，不，应该说是整部整部的书都是关于这件事的。

15 jaunt   

v.短程旅游；n.游览

参考例句：

• They are off for a day's jaunt to the beach.他们出去到海边玩一天。
• They jaunt about quite a lot,especially during the summer.他们常常到处闲逛，夏天更是如此。

16 mantled   

披着斗篷的，覆盖着的

参考例句：

• Clouds mantled the moon. 云把月亮遮住。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The champagne mantled in the glass. 玻璃杯里的香槟酒面上泛起一层泡沫。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

17 haze   

n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊

参考例句：

• I couldn't see her through the haze of smoke.在烟雾弥漫中，我看不见她。
• He often lives in a haze of whisky.他常常是在威士忌的懵懂醉意中度过的。

18 orchard   

n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场

参考例句：

• My orchard is bearing well this year.今年我的果园果实累累。
• Each bamboo house was surrounded by a thriving orchard.每座竹楼周围都是茂密的果园。

19 ornithologist   

n.鸟类学家

参考例句：

• That area is an ornithologist's paradise.那个地区是鸟类学家的天堂。
• Now I know how an ornithologist feels.现在我知道做为一个鸟类学家的感受了。

20 scripture   

n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段

参考例句：

• The scripture states that God did not want us to be alone.圣经指出上帝并不是想让我们独身一人生活。
• They invoked Hindu scripture to justify their position.他们援引印度教的经文为他们的立场辩护。

21 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

22 lore   

n.传说；学问，经验，知识

参考例句：

• I will seek and question him of his lore.我倒要找上他，向他讨教他的渊博的学问。
• Early peoples passed on plant and animal lore through legend.早期人类通过传说传递有关植物和动物的知识。

23 tenements   

n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Here were crumbling tenements, squalid courtyards and stinking alleys. 随处可见破烂的住房、肮脏的庭院和臭气熏天的小胡同。 来自辞典例句
• The tenements are in a poor section of the city. 共同住宅是在城中较贫苦的区域里。 来自辞典例句