To' escape the' impending famine, often scared
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resign'd
To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut; and, wading at their head
With well consider'd steps, seems to resent
His alter'd gait and stateliness retrench'd.
How find the myriads that in summer cheer
The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs
Due sustenance, or where subsist they now?
Earth yields them nought; the' imprison'd worm is
Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs [safe
Lie cover'd close; and berry-bearing thorns,
That feed the thrush, (whatever some suppose)
Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.
The long protracted rigour of the year
Thins all their numerous flocks.
Ten thousand seek an unmolested end [holes
As instinct prompts; self-buried ere they die.
The very rooks and daws forsake the fields,
Where neither grub nor root nor earth-nut now
Repays their labour more; and perch'd aloft
By the way side, or stalking in the path,
Lean pensioners upon the traveller's track,
Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them,
Of voided pulse or half-digested grain.
The streams are lost amid the splendid blank,
O'erwhelming all distinction. On the flood,
Indurated and fix'd, the snowy weight
Lies undissolved; while silently beneath,
And unperceived, the current steals away.
Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps
The milldam, dashes on the restless wheel,
And wantons in the pebbly gulf below:
No frost can bind it there; its utmost force
Can but arrest the light and smoky mist,
That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.
And see where it has hung the' embroider'd banks
With forms so various that no powers of art,
The pencil or the pen, may trace the scene!
Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high
(Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof
Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees
And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops
That trickle down the branches, fast congeal'd,
Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,
And prop the pile they but adorn'd before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies
The sunbeam; there, emboss'd and fretted wild,
The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes
Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain
The likeness of some object seen before.
BEAUTEOUS thy blue uprising, mist-robed Morn;
All thy bright glittering of fantastic dews
With their thin tissue silkening the green meads,
And all thy music of blithe leaves that dance
In the caressing breeze, and matin's gay
From all the living woodland; Sleep is pleased
To be so sweetly banish'd her soft reign.
But dreary are thy sounds, and sad thy light
On the lewd wassail, riot orgies rude,
Polluting day with sights that shame dark night.
A FOGGY MORNING.
NOT pleasureless the morn, when dismal fog
Rolls o'er the dewy plain, or thin mist drives;
When the lone timber's saturated branch
Drips freely, and with large redundant drop
The spread umbrella pelts, which the chill'd tooth
Screens, and o'ercanopies the languid lock.
Shorn of his glory, through the dim profound
With melancholy aspect looks the orb
Of stifled day, and while he strives to pierce
And dissipate the slow reluctant gloom
Seems but a rayless globe, an autumn moon
That gilds opaque the purple zone of eve,
Nor yet distributes of her thrifty beam.
Lo! now he conquers; now, subdued awhile,
Awhile subduing, the departed mist
Yields us a brighter beam, or darker clouds
His crimson disk obscure. Through the thin veil
Of his foul mantle reads the bard, well pleased,
A kindling glimpse of the pure azure field
Of heaven's unbounded champaign, and the hour
Of winter's noon serene with inward joy
Greets ere it bless his sight. To him who walks
Now in the shelter'd mead, loud roars above
Among the naked branches of the elm,
Still freshening as the hurried cloud departs,
The strong Atlantic gale. Not louder falls
The foamy lasher's cataract superb
In fullest flood-time, when impatient Thames
Fights with the lock which chains him to his seat,
And strives to burst his manacles in vain.
As, when the daw-throng on the steeple perch,
Ambitious of its loftiest vane, and smoke
Shot upwards from the funnel mounts erect,
Fair day succeeds; so when the turbid stream
That issues from the chimney falls depress'd,
And travels foglike o'er the dewy field,
While at a distance the loud western bell
Distinctly sings, day foul and pluvious comes.
Dim the nocturnal sky; its feebler lights
Lost in the dense profound, its brighter gems
Obscurely visible. If chance the moon
Cross the quench'd Empyrean, her sad orb
Shines with abated beam, and seems to wear
A misty atmosphere. Far in the void
An ampler circle with capacious zone
Her central disk encloses. Spiritless
At his round table sits the farmer lord;
A drowsy yawn his pipe-inhaling jaws
Relaxes often. At his foot the cur [dreams,
Sleeps on the hearth outstretch'd, and yelping
Or lifts his head, astonish'd at the dance
Of frisking puss who on the sanded floor
Gambols excessive. Such ere close of day
Were the wild antics of the frantic herd
(Alike prophetic of the morrow storm)
Who leap'd and raced and bellow'd in the mead,
And clash'd their horny foreheads, staring fierce.
Dim in the socket burns the sulky wick,
Nor heeds the trimming hand which oft divides
The kindled fibres of its nape in vain,
And to the oil redundant, that would drown
Its feeble flame, relieving sluice affords.
WILD flies the midday vapour dense and foul, And soon shall come the fall. O'er the blue deep Of beauteous ether trails the lazy cloud,
A sable fleece, repository dark
Of murky snows unwinnow'd, stooping low,
Lambent already of the topmost hill.
Few flakes of every size float through the air,
And undetermined or to rise or fall,
Caught by the circling eddy of the breeze,
Lo! now they mingle all in rapid dance,
And with a sweep descend. A feathery shower
Of flakes enormous follows, lighting soft
As cygnet's down, or egret from the head
Of thistle ravish'd. Oft against the shower
Homeward returns the steeple-loving daw,
But, blinded still, with agitated wing,
Down drops, struggling in vain, and to the branch,
Which midway meets him in his worried flight,
Retires defeated. To his early couch,
The golden lap of the vast western cloud
Which spreads beneath him its capacious bed,
Hastens the sun, or through the saffron skirt
Of the dark cloud that overtakes his orb
Snow-shedding, with dishevel'd beams aslant
Disorder'd smiles. In his pale watery ray
Glitter the distant vane and gilded clock.
Night follows muffled in profoundest gloom,
The sullen gale howls in the dismal elm,
Or in the chimney groans, with sudden gust
Oft forcing downward a sulphureous puff
Noisome below. Against the window pelts
Scarce heard, at intervals, the frozen shower,
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