Algy alighted cautiously on the frozen surface of the burn, and perched as lightly as he could on the sparkling crystals. He wondered whether the ice would hold his weight, or whether he would suddenly be plunged into the freezing water, which he could see bubbling through a narrow channel to his side, and feel tickling him through his chilly perch as it gurgled beneath him. He was reminded of some lines from an old poem:
What art thou, frost? and whence are thy keen stores
Deriv’d, thou secret all-invading power,
Whom ev’n th’ illusive fluid cannot fly?
Is not thy potent energy, unseen,
Myriads of little salts, or hook’d, or shap’d
Like double wedges, and diffus’d immense
Through water, earth, and ether? Hence at eve,
Steam’d eager from the red horizon round,
With the fierce rage of Winter deep suffus’d,
An icy gale, oft shifting, o’er the pool
Breathes a blue film, and in its mid-career
Arrests the bickering stream. The loosen’d ice,
Let down the flood and half dissolv’d by day,
Rustles no more; but to the sedgy bank
Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed stone,
A crystal pavement, by the breath of heaven
Cemented firm; till, seiz’d from shore to shore,
The whole imprison’d river growls below.
Algy sends special fluffy hugs to all his friends in the frozen north this weekend, to help you all keep warm this weekend, and he says “If you venture out onto the ice, please take great care!” xo
[Algy is quoting a few line lines from Winter, part of the long poem cycle The Seasons by the 18th century Scottish poet James Thomson.]
The Adventures of Algy 