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From “The Seasons: Winter”
THE KEENER tempests rise; and fuming dun | |
| From all the livid east, or piercing north, | |
| Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb | |
| A vapory deluge lies, to snow congealed. | |
| Heavy they roll their fleecy world along; | 5 |
| And the sky saddens with the gathered storm. | |
| Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends | |
| At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes | |
| Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day | |
| With a continual flow. The cherished fields | 10 |
| Put on their winter robe of purest white. | |
| ’T is brightness all; save where the new snow melts | |
| Along the mazy current. Low the woods | |
| Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid sun | |
| Faint from the west emits his evening ray, | 15 |
| Earth’s universal face, deep hid and chill, | |
| Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide | |
| The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox | |
| Stands covered o’er with snow, and then demands | |
| The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven, | 20 |
| Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around | |
| The winnowing store, and claim the little boon | |
| Which Providence assigns them. One alone, | |
| The redbreast, sacred to the household gods, | |
| Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, | 25 |
| In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves | |
| His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man | |
| His annual visit. Half afraid, he first | |
| Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights | |
| On the warm hearth; then, hopping o’er the floor, | 30 |
| Eyes all the smiling family askance, | |
| And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is: | |
| Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs | |
| Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds | |
| Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, | 35 |
| Though timorous of heart, and hard beset | |
| By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs, | |
| And more unpitying man, the garden seeks, | |
| Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind | |
| Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth, | 40 |
| With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed, | |
| Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow. | |
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