KING WINTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

KING WINTER.

(By Nancy Harvey. Westwell Road Takapuna, W. 2.; age 14.)

With a feeling of sorrow in my heart I have watched the spring draw closer to the earth. I have felt her gentle caress and her sunny smile. But ah! Is it not September?

I have done my work thoroughly, sweeping the land with my wings, refreshing it with my rain, and now with my frost fairies and enow elves, I shall withdraw to the hills—to the quiet hills. But my days will not be lonely.

I must prepare for the next winter, make pictures of tempests, a gale which even the largest craft will find difficult to weather, a wind that will rend the sails, and send vain men a-running after their hats, and women tightly clutching their skirts. What times! What fun! Perhaps a deluge of blinding rain, which swells the rivers and washes away bridges like matchwood, and goes singing on through the night.

Then Jack Frost, too, will silver his cobwebs, paint his fantastic pictures on Ihe windows and lay his hoary breath on the potato crops.

My snow fairies will work by night, ladening tho pines with their weight, covering the fences and roofs and churchspires, and by morning all will be- a new fairyland.

And now I see green shoots, and tiny leaves peeping through the brown earth, as spring takes my place—but not for ever. In June I shall leave the hills, and once again King Winter will rule.