| |
| “HOW 1 changed, how fallen” now the landscape lies, | |
| Which late with beauty’s image bless’d our eyes; | |
| Loved summer scenes, ah! whither have ye fled? | |
| Ye short-lived charms, no sooner loved than dead! | |
| Dear rural prospects, once with verdure graced, | 5 |
| But now by Winter’s blighting touch laid waste; | |
| Fair objects, that on mortal sense could pour | |
| Delights, that glad man’s torpid sense no more; | |
| Once all your charms, with ever new delight, | |
| In swift succession rose upon my sight; | 10 |
| With secret rapture often have I gazed | |
| On Nature’s gifts, and Nature’s Author praised; | |
| When genial showers enrich’d the teeming earth, | |
| And vernal warmth gave vegetation birth, | |
| Then throbb’d my heart, by Winter’s blast unchill’d, | 15 |
| And speechless feelings through my bosom thrill’d; | |
| Or when the fervor of a summer sun | |
| Matured what Spring’s creative power had done; | |
| Or recent Autumn’s yellow fields appear’d, | |
| And health and hope the rustic owner cheer’d; | 20 |
| When bounteous harvests well repaid his toil, | |
| And various plenty made the country smile; | |
| When every wish indulgent Nature crown’d, | |
| And shed her gifts exuberant around, | |
| Enraptured I beheld,—the hours were spent | 25 |
| In warm acknowledgment and calm content. | |
| While thus I call to mind enjoyments past, | |
| And with them Winter’s dreary scenes contrast, | |
| On evanescent good while mem’ry dwells, | |
| The gloomy retrospect my bosom swells; | 30 |
| Desponding images my thoughts employ, | |
| The wreck of beauty, and the death of joy: | |
| Dismantled earth inspires the soul with dread— | |
| Loved Summer’s scenes! ah, wherefore have ye fled? | |
| Long gath’ring vapors now to clouds increased, | 35 |
| Surcharged with frosty stores, involve the east: | |
| Bleak Eurus there prepares his chilling blasts, | |
| A weight of snow the burthen’d air o’ercasts; | |
| Of keener cold and piercing frosts I sing, | |
| Engend’ring in the air, which soon will cling | 40 |
| Fast hold on all beneath, which soon will throw | |
| A robe of whiteness over all below: | |
| Stern Winter, now confirm’d, in wrath impends; | |
| With all his gloomy ensigns he descends; | |
| For, lo! he gives the ripen’d mischief birth, | 45 |
| And shakes his vapory produce on the earth: | |
| ’T is come, dread Winter’s hoary badge is come, | |
| And bids the earth prepare to meet its doom. | |
| By Eurus driven through the sluggish air, | |
| The shower, minute and light, flies wavering there; | 50 |
| But soon, o’er all the atmosphere dispersed, | |
| Creation in its bosom lies immersed: | |
| Perpetual driving snow obscures the skies, | |
| Commixing heaven and earth while thus it flies; | |
| The spreading ruin overwhelms the plains, | 55 |
| And dazzling whiteness over nature reigns; | |
| Its weight oppressive swells the hills, and lo! | |
| Beneath accumulating heaps of snow, | |
| How yonder trees, with drooping branches, stand | |
| In white array, a venerable band! | 60 |
| How close the fleecy shroud to earth adheres! | |
| How uniform the boundless scene appears! | |
| Wide and more wide the spotless waste prevails, | |
| Till aching vision at the prospect fails; | |
| Till the spent gale an ermine mantle flings | 65 |
| O’er all this sublunary scene of things. | |
| Nor have the clouds spent all their downy store, | |
| But on the earth a frozen deluge pour: | |
| Still more collecting, unexhausted still, | |
| Though subtile flakes each lurking fissure fill, | 70 |
| And every vale exalts itself a hill. | |
| Meanwhile the cattle shun the whelming waste, | |
| With quicken’d speed for shelter home they haste, | |
| Mournful, and ruminating as they go, | |
| And shaking from their sides the cumb’rous snow: | 75 |
| Arrived at home, the dumb expecting band, | |
| For entrance, near their hovels shivering stand; | |
| The lowing kine the milker’s hand intreat, | |
| And oft the call importunate repeat; | |
| Son’rous and long resounds the lowing strain; | 80 |
| The hills responsive bellow back again. | |
| There too the fleecy tribe their pittance crave, | |
| Which once the herbage wild spontaneous gave; | |
| And clam’rous bleat for their accustom’d meal, | |
| Which cold made scant, and now thick snows conceal. | 85 |
| There chanticleer the storm undaunted braves, | |
| Proud o’er the feather’d throng his plumage waves; | |
| He spurns the snow, the blast he does not reck, | |
| But, crowing shrill, exalts his glossy neck. | |
| The steed rears graceful there his tow’ring size, | 90 |
| With head erect he gazes on the skies, | |
| And prances wild, and snuffs the chilling air, | |
| And neighs, impatient for the owner’s care: | |
| Nor long the helpless brutes his succor ask, | |
| Soon, whistling, comes the peasant to his task; | 95 |
| Them large supplies of provender to spare, | |
| And house them safe is his assiduous care. | |
| Next comes the thrifty milk-maid, early taught | |
| To shun destructive sloth, which oft hath brought | |
| Its slaves to want, to vice, disease and wo, | 100 |
| And all the num’rous evils mortals know; | |
| She comes to drain the kine; industrious she, | |
| Domestic work to ply; with heartfelt glee, | |
| She treads her native snow, she cheerly sings | |
| Her simple rural strains, and with her brings | 105 |
| Her ample pails, pure as contiguous snow, | |
| Which soon with copious streams of milk o’erflow. | |
| Now, laden with the luscious spoil, she trips, | |
| And, as she treads incautious, often slips: | |
| The peasant too, returns in jocund mood; | 110 |
| His herds, well housed, enjoy their sav’ry food; | |
| From cold and hunger free, they there abide, | |
| Nor aught of comfort wish or know, beside. | |
| But oft, devoid of such a friendly shield, | |
| To savage winter’s ruthless grasp they yield; | 115 |
| The fleecy flocks are buried oft in snow, | |
| And undiscover’d breathe in depths below; | |
| The anxious shepherd seeks his charge in vain, | |
| And rambles joyless o’er the desert plain; | |
| But if he chance to find the smother’d race, | 120 |
| Their breath, that thaws the snow, denotes the place; | |
| The lengthy hook he gladly then suspends, | |
| By this the suff’rer, scarce alive, ascends; | |
| While those remain whom death the power denies | |
| To make the snow-dissolving breath arise. | 125 |
| By hunger urged, the nimble-footed deer | |
| O’er snow-crown’d heights pursues his swift career; | |
| The hapless brute by huntsmen’s toils annoy’d. | |
| Oft meets the fate he labors to avoid; | |
| A vale, replete with snow, betrays his steps, | 130 |
| Incautious in the fatal depth he leaps; | |
| In vain he struggles now himself to clear, | |
| And panting, dreading, sees his foes draw near; | |
| They come, they wound, they slay the guiltless beast:— | |
| Already fancy riots at the feast; | 135 |
| Big tears hang trembling in his dying eyes, | |
| Unmoved they hear the captive’s piteous cries, | |
| Exulting, grapple their expiring prey, | |
| And, loud rejoicing, bear the prize away. | |
| Nor yet contented with the lusty prize, | 140 |
| Insatiate man to meaner conquests flies: | |
| He skirts the forest, and he beats the copse, | |
| The hare and squirrel now invite his hopes: | |
| In hollow trees, and burrows under ground, | |
| He careful pries, and looks expectant round. | 145 |
| If now the parent hare hath left her haunt, | |
| In quest of sustenance her offspring want, | |
| The helpless young, in man’s deep arts unskill’d, | |
| To his perfidious stratagem must yield: | |
| The dam, improvident of winter’s store, | 150 |
| Now dubious roams abroad in search of more; | |
| And, spurr’d by pressing want, the snow disturbs, | |
| To glean precarious food from wither’d herbs; | |
| But deadly guns her anxious search cut short, | |
| Or traps insidious lie where game resort; | 155 |
| Or, if she shun these snares, a harder fate, | |
| Severer evils her return await: | |
| Her haunt she enters, but the hapless hare | |
| Beholds nor mate, nor harmless offspring there, | |
| And dies with cold, with hunger and despair. | 160 |
| The fowler too the meads and woods explores; | |
| With his remorseless feats the country roars; | |
| With cautious step, and big with hope and fear, | |
| He pauses now, and now approaches near, | |
| And eyes the feather’d flock through all their flight, | 165 |
| Till on some tempting meadow they alight, | |
| Within his reach; then points, with steady hand, | |
| The fatal engine to the heedless band; | |
| Swift from the tube escapes the leaden death, | |
| That lays them prostrate, gasping out their breath; | 170 |
| While others, startled at the ruthless deed, | |
| Precipitate and wild, forsake the mead; | |
| But many, flying, meet the death they shun, | |
| And swifter ruin leaves the murd’rous gun; | |
| Through yielding air it flies, with thund’ring sound, | 175 |
| And hurls its conquest on the blood-stain’d ground! | |
| On skates of wood the sons of Lapland go. | |
| To hunt the elk o’er endless tracts of snow, | |
| Nor heed the cavities which lurk below: | |
| Upon the snow-topp’d surface far and wide, | 180 |
| Accoutred for the chase, they fearless slide; | |
| The huntsman, fleet and fierce as winter’s wind, | |
| Each moment leaves a length’ning space behind; | |
| Mad with desire his object he pursues, | |
| Too late the beast his luckless fortune rues; | 185 |
| The sanguine foe, with horizontal aim, | |
| Darts instantaneous ruin to the game; | |
| Dextrous he manages the missile bow, | |
| That lays his victim’s branching antlers low; | |
| The deathful weapon cuts th’ aerial space, | 190 |
| And crowns the triumph of the savage chase! | |
