Cold Enough

I was never good at Winter, and I don't miss it, one little bit. But I suppose I miss the idea of Winter, the poetry of the season. Here's Edmund Spenser beginning February in The Shepheardes Calendar: Ah for pittie, wil rancke Winters rage, / These bitter blasts neuer ginne tasswage? / The kene cold blowes through my beaten hyde, / All as I were through the body gryde.

That's quite enough cold for me, thanks; far too easy to imagine if you're from Manchester. (And I reckon old ES is making a lot of this up from his own imagination. His verse is so inauthentic. He actually glosses that gryde which was already archaic when he used it, admitting it's not even in Chaucer. Much used of Lidgate, he claims, saying it means 'pierced'. But that doesn't make it right - even if it sounds great.)