[E]very winter, When the great sun has turned his face away, The earth goes down into the vale of grief, And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay— Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses...

Kingsley personifies the seasonal cycle as a drama of separation and reunion between the sun (cast as a bridegroom) and the earth (cast as a bride or widow). Winter becomes a period of ritual mourning—fasting, weeping, and wearing “sables”—in which fertility and ornament (“wedding-garlands”) wither. Spring, by contrast, is figured as erotic and restorative, a return to life through “kisses.” The passage blends Christian-inflected imagery of grief and penitence with older mythic motifs of the dying-and-returning year, using sensuous language to make natural recurrence feel emotionally and morally legible.