THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SQUIRREL

THE mountain and the squirrel

Had a quarrel;

And the former called the latter 'Little Prig.'

Bun replied,

'You are doubtless very big;

But all sorts of things and weather

Must be taken in together,

To make up a year and a sphere.

And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,

And not half so spry.

I'll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track;

Talents differ: all is well and wisely put;

If I can not carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut!'

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

THE SKATER

My glad feet shod with the glittering steel
I was the god of the wingéd heel.

The hills in the far white sky were lost;
The world lay still in the wide white frost;

And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.

Here was a pathway, smooth like glass,
Where I and the wandering wind might pass

To the far-off palaces, drifted deep,
Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep.

I followed the lure, I fled like a bird,
Till the startled hollows awoke and heard

A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang,
As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang;

And the wandering wind was left behind
As faster, faster I followed my mind;

Till the blood sang high in my eager brain,
And the joy of my flight was almost pain.

Then I stayed the rush of my eager speed
And silently went as a drifting seed,-

Slowly, furtively, till my eyes

Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,

And the hair on my neck began to creep
At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.

Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.

In the deep of my heart I heard my fear;

And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,
From the white, inviolate solitude.

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND

BLOW, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although, thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then, heigh-ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember'd not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then, heigh-ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

TO THE WEST WIND

I

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill;

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver, hear, oh hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear
And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear !