Wanted, an Hibernacle
— In some far past of the race did not human beings hibernate, like so many of their humbler brethren in fur and feathers ? I only know that with the first pronounced chill of the season, while the blurred sun, low down in the southern heavens, seems preparing, as Sir Thomas Browne hath it, to make “but winter arches,” I have an indubitable warning, which goes to the proverbial “ marrow of my bones,” that it is time for me to find my winter cell, my cosy dormitory. But alas, I have lost it! Nor can I obtain a guide so skillful that he will be able to rediscover it for me. And I cannot fail to regret my loss every succeeding year, as I feel my numbed senses sinking “lethewards ” in the first blunt onset of cold weather. Would it be any wonder if I envied the wiser and more provident folk who have canceled out of the season’s problem all the zero digits, and who are now reposing, with no care for the morrow and no experience of present storm and stress in the outer world ? I know that the toad has been cosily ensconced these many weeks past; the woodchuck, I have reason to believe, has shut his door and retired, at least till Candlemas Day ; I see where the winged sphinx of our midsummer evening dream (or some congener of the greater moth family) has hung her thick gray felt hammock upon the willow, like the overground burial of certain Indian tribes; then, also, there are the ferruled stems of the golden — now silver—• rod, in each one of whose woody globes reposes a plump sleeper; yes, though a grub, it is wiser than I, since nature having intended it should sleep away the cold season, it has complied. But I, who am not able to combat the drowsiness which I feel creeping over my activities, I alone have been remiss in my preparations: hence my advertisement in the present issue of “ wants.”
FROM SLEEP TO WAKING.
’T is Midnight of the Year, when streams beneath a fretted roof retire.
It is the Small Hours of the Year, when none of all that sleep will wake.
Howe’er the legion storms of heaven their deep and hidden fastness shake.
It is the Dark Hour ere the Dawn, when, through the growing rifts of sleep,
The wistful-eyed and moaning dreams of other days begin to peep.
But when, amid the softening rain, aloft, so mellow
and so clear,
The first flute of the robin sounds, it is the Daybreak of the Year!