Woke up to snow on the ground (Allen’s grandmother–she is 96–told me a few months ago that it would not snow until the brooks are full. The brooks are now full and it has snowed).

When it first snows I always go back and read The Dead, if for no other reason (and there are many reasons to read it!) but that I can get to my favorite paragraph in all of literature:

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. it was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.