All About Frost and Frosts

This work by Barbara Walton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I remember reading lots of stories about Jack Frost when I was a child and the image of this chilly chappie lives on. In Britain and America, Jack is a youthful variant of Old Man Winter; we imagine him as an ice-blue boy who nips noses and chills the fingers and toes of children. He paints patterns in ice on the windows and frosts the trees and plants. The character, Jack Frost, may have originated as a sprite-like creature in Viking lore, called Jokul Frosti or "icicle frost." Father Frost is the Russian figure and he's a smith who ties together earth and water with heavy chains. Brings to mind 'earth as hard as iron'.

When moisture settles on the glass and begins to freeze the first frost crystals form a layer and after that each new crystal aligns itselves with the existing ones creating these wonderful ferny patterns. This still doesn't explain this natural wonder though!

Image: Courtesy of Irate, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

Read the rest of this moving poem here: Frost at Midnight

Skating from The Prelude

And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,
I heeded not their summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us - for me
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six, - I wheeled about
Proud and exulting like an untired horse,
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, - the resounding horn,
The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.

Read the rest of The Prelude here: The Prelude Book I Hear Ian McKellen reading Ice Skating

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) was an English Romantic poet who spent most of his life in the Lake District, northern England. The Lake District landscape is breathtakingly beautiful, a patchwork of woodland, hills, pastures and lakes studded with quaint villages and pretty towns. Wordsworth was happy describing this landscape in poetry and in recollecting the childhood sports and games. This poem celebrates frost and winter.