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Quotations for Groundhog Day



If ground-hog day was bright and fair,
The beast came forth, but not to stay;
His shadow turned him to his lair,
Where six weeks more, he dormant lay
Secure in subterranean hold—
So wondrous weatherwise was he—
Against six weeks of ice and cold,
Which, very certain, there would be...
~H. L. Fisher, "Popular Superstitions," Olden Times: or, Pennsylvania Rural Life, Some Fifty Years Ago, and Other Poems, 1888


If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will have another fight;
But if Candlemas Day be clouds and rain,
Winter is gone, and will not come again.
~Old rhyme


Yesterday was "ground-hog's day" in many parts of the United States, and Candlemas day in many other parts of the world. From time immemorial, it has been a critical day in the affairs of the weather. The character of the second of February is really of much more importance than whether the first of March comes in like a lion or a lamb. The simplest form of the adage is:—
      If Candlemas day be bright and clear,
      There'll be two winters in that year.
~Hartford Courant, 1877


The hedge-rows cast a shallow shade
      Upon the frozen grass,
      But skies at evening song are soft,
      And comes the Candlemas.
Each day a little later now
      Lingers the westering sun;
      Far out of sight the miracles
      Of April are begun.
O barren bough! O frozen field!
      Hopeless ye wait no more.
      Life keeps her dearest promises—
      The Spring is at the door!
~Arthur Ketchum, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1904


Though the groundhog and crocus creep into their holes
It's Spring, and the almanac shows it;
Though a polar wave over the continent rolls
It's Spring! And we don't care who knows it!
~Robert J. Burdette, "March," c.1888


Groundhog Day
Winter's grip's broken, the sun swings north!
~David J. Beard (1947–2016), @Raqhun, tweet, 2015


Everybody who knew anything about ciphering was called in to consider it. A young man from a high school near here, who made a specialty of mathematics and pimples, and who could readily tell how long a shadow a nine-pound ground-hog would cast at 2 o'clock and 37 minutes P.M., on ground-hog day, if sunny, at the town of Fungus, Dak., provided latitude and longitude and an irregular mass of red chalk be given to him, was secured to jerk a few logarithms in the interests of trade. He came and tried it for a few days, covered the interior of the Exposition Building with figures and then went away. ~Bill Nye, "Seeking to be Identified," Nye and Riley's Railway Guide by Edgar W. Nye and James Whitcomb Riley, 1888


In America, paying due deference to the creature's importance is our national mythology, it is left to the ground-hog to decide the day, and so the fate of the season. He is supposed to come out of his hole on that day, and take a look at the world. If it is a bright day, he will see his shadow on the ground, and, taking fright at it, will run back into his home and stay there. A fresh attack of winter will set in, and he will be justified in the steps he has taken. If it is cloudy, he will cast no shadow, take no fright, and gives us no further attack of winter. ~Hartford Courant, 1877


In European folk-lore, the bear is the Candlemas weather-prophet. ~John Russell Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, 1877


Look, friends, don't you see a swallow? The herald of spring. ~Aristophanes, 424 B.C.  ["One swallow will not make spring, nor one bee honey," says the old proverb. It derives from Aesop's fable of The Spendthrift and the Swallow. "A few warm days in winter brought a swallow from its hiding-place, and a young prodigal seeing it, sold his cloak and spent the proceeds in riotous living. But the frost returned, and he discovered, to his sorrow that 'one swallow does not make summer.'" Per Burton E. Stevenson. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


One Swallow maketh not Summer; nor one Woodcock a Winter. ~William Camden, Remains, 1605


To be interested in the changing seasons is... a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. ~George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905


Unwelcome Winter, that old Reprobate,
Is always Early; Spring is always Late.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Seasons," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924


Winter is twiddling her snowflakes,
Precariously poised
On the season's equator,
As hidden roots and channels and tendrils
Are burgeoning with spring,
And buds are a green explosion
Cancelling
Her ineffectual indecision.
~Alice Mackenzie Swaim, "Poised on the Season's Equator," Crickets Are Crying Autumn, 1960


O Spring! can I believe you,
With the score of times you've lied?
~V. A. R., "The Return of Spring," Poems, 1867


Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you. ~Maori proverb


Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." ~Robert Byrne, The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, 1984


Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?...
~Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton





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