Sunday, 4 January 2009

A Very Cold Night

The sharpest frost I have ever seen.


The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind...
Whether the eaves drop fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining...
Coleridge, 'Frost at Midnight"


Come, lovely Morning, rich in frost
On iron, wood and glass.
W.H. Davies, 'Silver Hours'

7 comments:

Vinogirl said...

Ron, did you take those pics? They are fantastically beautiful. 23 degrees F here this morning and sunny today, I love this weather...but I think I'd like yours better :)

Fred Fibonacci said...

Ooh Ron, what smashing pics. Blinking cold here too (but not as pretty).

Affer said...

Ah beautiful! So like a mid-summer's morning on lkley Moor.....

Peter Ashley said...

Yes Ron, such great pics it sticks in my throat. But what superb lines of poetry. That's a thing I love, finding a quote to go with an image or a piece of writing.

So cold in Ashley Towers I'm dismantling next door's fence for the woodburner. All it needs is for Tom Courtenay to appear as he does in Dr.Zhivago, in round spectacles on board his red flag be-decked locomotive. Samovar shaking at the end of the carriage....

Jon Dudley said...

Beautiful, just tear-jerkingly beautiful. Thank you.

Philip Wilkinson said...

Terrific, Ron: thank you. Brass monkeys in both the Cotswolds and Mitteleuropa, from which I've just returned, but nothing as beautiful as this. Now I'm off to find the rest of the W H Davies poem.

Jon Dudley said...

I love your accompanying verses. It's also rather nice to find a seasonal piece which cannot be attributed to any author, such as the following from an English traditional folk song:

'Twas down in the farmyard where the oxen feed on straw,
They send forth their breath like the steam.
Sweet Betsy the milkmaid now quickly she must go,
For flakes of ice she finds,
For flakes of ice she finds a-floating on her cream.