WINTER, ruler of the inverted year, Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled, A prisoner in the yet undawning east, Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy Down to the rosy west; but kindly still snows Compensating his loss with added hours Fringed with a beard made white with other of social converse and instructive ease, A leafless branch thy scepter, and thy throne sun Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. WILLIAM COWPER. THE SNOW-SHOWER. TAND here by my side and turn, I pray, Son the lake below, thy gentle eyes; The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, They sink in the dark and silent lake. See how in a living swarm they come Who were for a time. and now are not; Like these fair children of cloud and frost, That glitter a moment and then are lost, Flake after flake, All lost in the dark and silent lake! Yet look again, for the clouds divide; A sunbeam falls from the opening skies. But the hurrying host that flew between From the chambers beyond that misty veil; The cloud and water, no more is seen; Some hover awhile in air, and some Rush prone from the sky like summer hail. All dropping swiftly or settling slow, Meet and are still in the depths below; Flake after flake Dissolved in the dark and silent lake. Here, delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud, Come floating downward in airy play, Flake after flake, At rest in the dark and silent lake. Like spangles dropped from the glistening A WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. LOST IN THE SNOW. ("From Winter.") S thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce All Winter drives along the darkened air, In his own loose-revolving fields the swain Disastered 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 vigor 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 feigned His tufted cottage, rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track and blest 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 covered pits, unfathomably deep, A dire descent, beyond the power of frost; of faithless bogs; of precipices huge, Smoothed 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. |