From The Guardian:
And so we find ourselves in February, at one time the last month of the Roman calendar and a time of ritual purification by washing. In Ireland, by way of contrast, it is officially the first month of spring, and the first day of the month was Imbolc, a Celtic fire festival. While the designation of early February as springtime often strikes us as lunacy, this mild year the first buds are appearing on the trees outside the window here already.
Spenser, in the prologue to his Shepheardes
Calender poem for February, explicitly draws on the Roman tradition and
the poem evokes the idea of the old age of the year to underpin its call for
youths to respect their elders. The poem takes the form of a dialogue between
the aged shepherd Thenot and Cuddie, a herdsman's boy. The youth is, at the
beginning, contemptuous of the old, but the shepherd reminds him that distain
for age is distain for God, the oldest being of all.
"The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.
Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Afternoon in February
"February is a
suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and
frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems
preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful,
hanging on too long."
- Anna Quindlen, One True Thing
"Be off!" say Winter's snows;
"Now it's my turn to sing!"
So, startled, quivering,
Not daring to oppose
(Our fortitude grows dim in
The face of a Quos ego),
Away, my songs, must we go
Before those virile women!
Rain. We are forced to fly,
Everywhere, utterly.
End of the comedy.
Come, swallows, it's good-bye.
Wind, sleet. The branches sway,
Writhing their stunted limbs,
And off the white smoke swims
Across the heavens' gray.
A pallid yellow lingers
Over the chilly dale.
My keyhole blows a gale
Onto my frozen fingers."
- Victor Hugo, Be Off Winter Snow
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