John Dryden

The cold spell continues. Some efforts made to clear the pavements of ice leave piles of slabs like shattered marble. A day’s respite tomorrow with temperatures rising to four or five centigrade! Cold and snowy conditions forecast to continue up to Christmas. I plan to start my own sled-making company: Rosebud Enterprises Ltd.. This promises to be a sound investment opportunity for all Spherians.

I’m coming round to the theory that in the Northern Hemisphere we are beginning to experience the climatic effects of low sun-spot activity combined with the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland.

During the Great Frost of 1683–84 the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London. Solid ice was reported for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea and the Low Countries, causing severe problems for shipping and preventing the use of harbours. This is part of the time known by climatologists as the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1710. John Dryden (1631-1700) lived through this period.

from A Book of the Winter:


Time's Whiter Series


And now time’s whiter Series is begun
Which in soft Centuries shall smoothly run.


John Dryden. Astraea Redux.


Further on in the white series:


Midwinter


Entranced, you turn again and over there
It is white also. Rectangular white lawns
For miles, white walls between them. Snow.
You close your eyes. The terrible changes.

White movements in one corner of your room.
Between your hands, the flowers of your quilt
Are stormed. Dark shadows smudge
Their faded impossible colours, but won’t settle.

You can hear the ice take hold.
Along the street
The yellowed drifts, cleansed by a minute’s fall,
Wait to be fouled again. Your final breath
Is in the air, pure white, and moving fast.

Ian Hamilton. Faber and Faber. Fifty Poems.1988.