Winter Scenes

James Thomson (1700–1748)

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;

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

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,

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,

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,

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,

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,

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,

With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,

Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.