The dry leaves rustled in each passing breath,

And the gay world was lost in quiet sleep. Such was the time when, on the landscape brown, Through a December air the snow came down.

The morning came, the dreary morn, at last, And showed the whitened waste. The shivering herd

Lowed on the hoary meadow-ground, and fast

Fell the light flakes upon the earth unstirred; The forest firs with glittering snows o'erlaid Stood like hoar priests in robes of white arrayed.

JOHN

HOWARD BRYANT.

WINTER

SCENES.

66
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 de-
scends

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