Midwinter Night's Lunacy

It just tickles me that today is Winter Solstice and it began with a full lunar eclipse (for the 1st time since 1638!)  Something about that just feels so Celtic and magical.  Personally, I prefer Winter Solstice to Summer -- I like my days short!  Both Winter Solstice and, well all things lunar (especially eclipses) also have so much literary resonance.  A good amount of the poetry, prose and drama I read in graduate school for my thesis on witchcraft in Renaissance literature referenced these two events and their centrality to magical happenings.  Their combined presence makes it feel like a day for magical secrets -- and a favorite poem by Christina Rossetti is what's running through my brain right now, so I post it here for you today:

Winter: My Secret

              Christina Rossetti

Perhaps some day, who knows?

But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,

And you're too curious: fie!

You want to hear it? well:

Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:

Suppose there is no secret after all,

But only just my fun.

Today's a nipping day, a biting day;

In which one wants a shawl,

A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:

I cannot ope to everyone who taps,

And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;

Come bounding and surrounding me,

Come buffeting, astounding me,

Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.

I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows

His nose to Russian snows

To be pecked at by every wind that blows?

You would not peck? I thank you for good will,

Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust

March with its peck of dust,

Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,

Nor even May, whose flowers

One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,

When drowsy birds sing less and less,

And golden fruit is ripening to excess,

If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,

And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,

Perhaps my secret I may say,

Or you may guess.

...and one more, by Hardy -- to honor the eclipse :)

 At a Lunar Eclipse

          Thomas Hardy

Thy shadow steals along upon the Moon's meek shine 
In even monochrome and curving line 
Of imperturbable serenity. 

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry 
With the torn troubled form I know as thine, 
That profile, placid as a brow divine, 
With continents of moil and misery? 

And can immense Mortality but throw 
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme 
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies? 

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show, 
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem, 
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?