The touch of kindred too and love he feels: The modest eye, whose beams on his alone Ecstatic shine; the little strong embrace Of prattling children, twin'd around his neck, And emulous to please him, calling forth The fond parental soul. Nor purpose gay, Amusement, dance, or song, he sternly scorns; For happiness and true philosophy
Are of the social still, and smiling kind. This is the life which those who fret in guilt, And guilty cities never knew; the life,
Led by primeval ages, uncorrupt,
When angels dwelt, and God himself with man.
THE keener tempests rise: and fuming dun From all the livid east, or piercing north, Thick clouds ascend, in whose capacious womb A vapoury deluge lies, to snow congeal'd. Heavy they roll their fleecy world along; And the sky saddens with the gather'd storm. Through the hush'd 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 cherish'd 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 wild dazzling waste, that burns wide The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of Heaven, Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around The winnowing store, and claim the little boon Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The red-breast, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of th' 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 men, the garden seeks, Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth, With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispers'd; Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow.
TRAVELLER PERISHING IN THE SNOWS.
As thus the snows arise; and foul, and fierce, All winter drives along the darken'd air; In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain: Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray; Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul! What black despair, what horror fills his heart! When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track, and bles abode of man; While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost; Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,
What water, of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man, His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. In vain for him th' officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every, nerve The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up sense; And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse, Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Steam'd eager from the red horizon round, With the fierce rage of Winter deep suffus'd, An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool
Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career Arrests the bickering stream. The loosen'd ice, Let down the flood, and half dissolv'd by day, Rustles no more; but to the sedgy bank Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed stone, A crystal pavement, by the breath of Heaven Cemented firm; till, seiz'd from shore to shore, The whole imprison'd river growls below. Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects A double noise; while, at his evening watch, The village dog deters the nightly thief; The heifer lows; the distant water-fall Swells in the breeze; and, with the hasty tread Of traveller, the hollow-sounding plain Shakes from afar. The full ethereal round, Infinite worlds disclosing to the view, Shines out intensely keen; and, all one cope Of starry glitter, glows from pole to pole. From pole to pole the rigid influence falls, Through the still night, incessant, heavy, strong, And seizes Nature fast. It freezes on; Till morn, late-rising o'er the drooping world, Lifts her pale eye unjoyous. Then appears The various labour of the silent night:
Prone from the dripping eave, and dumb cascade, Whose idle torrents only seem to roar, The pendent icicle, the frost-work fair, Where transient hues, and fancied figures rise; Wide-spouted o'er the hill, the frozen brook, A livid tract, cold-gleaming on the morn; The forest bent beneath the plumy wave; And by the frost refin'd the whiter snow, Incrusted hard, and sounding to the tread Of early shepherd, as he pensive seeks His pining flock, or from the mountain top, Pleas'd with the slippery surface, swift descends.
Pure, quick, and sportful, is the wholesome day; But soon elaps'd. The horizontal sun,
Broad o'er the south, hangs at his utmost noon : And, ineffectual, strikes the gelid cliff:
His azure gloss the mountain still maintains, Nor feels the feeble touch. Perhaps the vale Relents a while to the reflected ray :
Or from the forest falls the cluster'd snow, Myriads of gems, that in the waving gleam Gay-twinkle as they scatter. Thick around Thunders the sport of those, who with the gun, And dog impatient bounding at the shot, Worse than the season, desolate the fields; And, adding to the ruins of the year, Distress the footed or the feather'd game.
• "T is done! dread Winter spreads his latest glooms, And reigns tremendous o'er the conquer'd year. How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! horror wide extends
His desolate domain. Behold, fond man!
See here thy pictur'd life; pass some few years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength, Thy sober Autumn fading into age,
And pale concluding Winter comes at last,
And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes Of happiness? those longings after fame?
Those restless cares? those busy bustling days? Those gay-spent, festive nights? those veering thoughts, Lost between good and ill, that shar'd thy life? All now are vanish'd! Virtue sole survives, Immortal, never-failing friend of man, His guide to happiness on high. And see! 'Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth Of heaven and earth! awakening Nature hears The new-creating word, and starts to life, In every heightened form, from pain and death For ever free. The great eternal scheme, Involving all, and in a perfect whole Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads, To reason's eye refin'd clears up apace. Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now, Confounded in the dust, adore that Power And Wisdom oft arraign'd: see now the cause, Why unassuming worth in secret liv'd,
And died, neglected': why the good man's share In life was gall and bitterness of soul: Why the lone widow and her orphans pin'd In starving solitude; while luxury,
In palaces, lay straining her low thought, To form unreal wants: why heaven-born truth, And moderation fair, wore the red marks Of superstition's scourge: why licens'd pain, That cruel spoiler, that embosom'd foe, Embitter'd all our bliss. Ye good distress'd! Ye noble few! who here unbending stand Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up a while, And what your bounded view, which only saw A little part, deem'd evil is no more:
The storms of Wintry Time will quickly pass, And one unbounded Spring encircle all.
THESE, as they change, ALMIGHTY FATHER, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of THEE. Forth in the pleasing Spring THY beauty walks, THY tenderness and love. Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; And every sense, and every heart is joy. Then comes THY glory in the Summer months, With light and heat refulgent. Then THY sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year: And oft THY Voice in dreadful thunder speaks: And oft at dawn, deep noon, and falling eve, By brooks and groves, and hollow-whispering gales THY bounty shines in Autumn unconfin'd, And spreads a common feast for all that lives. In Winter awful THоU! with clouds and storms Around THEE thrown, tempest o'er tempest roll'd. Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing, Riding sublime, THOU bidst the world adore, And humblest Nature with THY northern blast.
Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine, Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train, Yet so delightful mix'd, with such kind art, Such beauty and beneficence combin'd ; Shade, unperceiv'd, so softening into shade; And all so forming an harmonious whole; That, as they still succeed, they ravish still. But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze, Man marks not THEE, marks not the mighty hand,
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