Snow or Sunshine

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 443, 19 December 1947, Page 32

Snow or Sunshine

OMFORT, especially this vision of Christmas comfort, is the reverse of a gross of material thing. It is far more poetical, properly speaking, than the Garden of Epicurus; it is far more artistic than the Palace of: Art. It is far more artistic because it is based upon a contrast, a contrast between the fire and wine within the house, and the winter and roaring rains without. It is far more poetical, because there is in it a note of defence, almost of war; a note of being besieged by the snow and hail; of making merry in the belly of a fort.

G. K.

CHESTERTON

("Charles Dickens’)

* * * (CCHRISTMAS DAY came in silently, serenely, and golden-footed. The dawn unfolded itself without a stirring of the trees. Moving a gentle hand across the cloudless sky it put out the stars and slowly filled the great spaces with warm light. Gradually the cloak of mystery was lifted from the high and

broken line of the coast, and rocky cliff and round headland, curve of sand’ and forested slope, became definite in the clear morning light. The tide of day touched the great gnarled sea-loving trees on the beaches and the cliff edges, awoke to fiery life the splendour of their blossoms, and sank till it unfolded their fantastic limbs, The swell of the ocean, rolling from a thousand miles of dominion, threw its faint white line lovingly on the beaches, or slipped in among the rocks in a quiet smother of foam. The tents in the glade were the only sign of life, and in the shade of the trees they lay for long in the cool twilight or dawn,

ALAN

MULGAN

(Spar of Morning’).