A WINTER AFTERNOON

Southern Cross, Volume 20, Issue 16, 13 July 1912, Page 6

A WINTER AFTERNOON

(By Dan Cole). I ain a lover of Nature, and deeply interested in all natural phenomena. The lowering clouds and the driving stoi’m, the shriek of the wild west wind, as it dies away in a melancholy chromatic cadence ; the thundrous roll of the surf, as it beats and looms on the adamantine rock, suggests the wild and conflicting passions by which humanity is torn and wrecked.

I love to meet her, too, in the gentler moods she occasionally displays in the winter months, when, laying aside her usual severity, she smiles benignly, and .graciously permits the sun to shine forth in all his glory. A lonely invalid, I strolled down tej the jetty a few T days ago. From thence, when the tide is in, is to be seen all that is worth looking at from a scenic point of view about the town. Save at the Bluff, which was overhung by a cloud of deeper hue, the sky 'was uniformly gray, reflected in lighter shade by the waters of the estuary, calm and unruffled by a breath of wind. I turned and looked northward, and there beheld one of the most remarkable “effects” I ...have ever seen. Overhead the grey sky was shaded by bands of deeper grey, merging to' slate, and disposed in a most curious manner—the whole conveying the impression of a fantastically marbled maze. Beyond this again were glimpses of blue, shaded by grey and brown. Then a clear space of sky, and.' below the loom of the Longwoods, stretched across the horizon, were huge belts of dazzling silver, shading to pale orange, resting apparently in masses of piled seafoam. It was a dream of beauty—of fairyland. I sat entranced, as the waters glinted, in the silvery light. Now it not infrequently happens, when our thoughts soar to the heavens, some rude but common sound—a nagging tongue or the smashing of crockery, for instance —cripples our wings, and brings us down —down to earth again with a .crash. As I musingly wended my way homeward I was forcibly recalled to the realities of daily life by the noisy tram-car, the singing kettle, the sizzling sausage, the Southland News, and sleep.