1

Wintry boughs against a wintry sky;
Yet the sky is partly blue

And the clouds are partly bright.
Who can tell but sap is mounting high,
Out of sight,

Ready to burst through?

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI-Spring signals to Winter.

2

Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say,
"This is no flattery."

As You Like It. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 5.

3

Winter's not gone yet, if the wild-geese fly that

way.

King Lear. Act II. Sc. 4. L. 46.

4

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick, the shepherd, blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;

Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Love's Labour's Lost. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 922.

5

In winter, when the dismal rain

Came down in slanting lines,

And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines.

ALEXANDER SMITH-A Life Drama. Sc. 2.

6

Lastly came Winter cloathed all in frize,

Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill; Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freese, And the dull drops, that from his purpled bill As from a limebeck did adown distill: In his right hand a tipped staffe he held,

With which his feeble steps he stayed still; For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld; That scarce his loosed limbes he hable was to weld.

SPENSER-Faerie Queene. Canto VII. Legend of Constancie. St. 31.

The wisdom of our ancestors. BURKE Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation. Vol. I. P. 516. Also in the Discussion on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill. (1793) Cicero -De Legibus. II. 2. 3. LORD ELDONOn Sir Samuel Romilly's Bill. 1815. SYDNEY SMITH-Plymley's Letters. Letter V. BACON said to be first user of the phrase. Ascribed also to SIR WILLIAM GRANT, in JENNINGS' Anecdotal History of Parliament.

17

But these are foolish things to all the wise, And I love wisdom more than she loves me; My tendency is to philosophise

On most things, from a tyrant to a tree; But still the spouseless virgin Knowledge flies, What are we? and whence come we? what shall be

Our ultimate existence? What's our present? Are questions answerless, and yet incessant. BYRON-Don Juan. Canto VI. St. 63.

18

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

CATO. IN PLUTARCH'S Life of Cato.

(See also TENNYSON)

Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert, by the event.

BEN JONSON-Silent Woman. Act II. Sc. 2. Wise after the event.

Quoted by SIR GEORGE STAUNTON in speech replying to SIR JAMES GRAHAM's resolution condemning the Melbourne ministry, House of Commons, April 7, 1840. HOMER -Iliad. XVII. 32. HESIOD-Works and Days. V. 79 and 202. SOPHOCLES-Antigone. V. 1270; and 1350. FABIUS-Liv. XXII. 39. ERASMUS-Epitome Chiliadum Adagiorum. (Ed. 1528) P. 55; 295.