114

THE LEAFLESS TREE.

The lean and hollow cry,

On the wold, the wold, the wold!

Oh the wold, the wold,

Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the white sight,

Oh the shuddering night,

The shivering shuddering night,

On the wold, the wold, the wold!

SYDNEY THOMPSON

THE LEAFLESS TREE.

I TOO will wait with thee returning spring, When thick the leaves shall cling on every And birds within their new-grown arbor sing, Unmindful of the storms that tear me now For I have stript me naked to the blast

That now in triumph through my branches But soon the winter's bondage shall be past To him who in the Saviour's love abides; And as his Father to thy limbs returns,

Blossom and bloom to sprinkle o'er thy dre So shall Christ call from out their funeral urn

Those who in patience still their souls poss And clothe in raiment never to wax old, All whom his Father gave him for his fold.

JONES

WINTER.

115

WHERE ARE THE SONGS I USED TO

KNOW?

WHERE are the songs I used to know?
Where are the notes I used to sing?
I have forgotten everything

I used to know so long ago;

Summer has followed after Spring;
Now Autumn is so shrunk and sere,
I scarcely think a sadder thing
Can be the Winter of my year.

Yet Robin sings through Winter's rest,
When bushes put their berries on;
While they their ruddy jewels don,
He sings out of a ruddy breast;
The hips and haws and ruddy breast

Make one spot warm where snowflakes lie.
They break and cheer the unlovely rest
Of Winter's pause, — and why not I?

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI.

WINTER.

WHEN icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipped and ways be foul
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's sa
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

WILLIAM SHAKI

Love's Labor's

THE SNOWS.

THE green and happy world is hidden away;
Cold, cold, the ghostly snows lie on its bre
The white miles reach the shadows wan and
'Neath wan grey skies unchanged from

west,

Sleep on beneath the snows, chilled, barren, e There are no blossoms for thy winter dearth: Break not nor melt, fall still from heave

snows;

Hide the spoiled earth, and numb her to re MRS. AUGUSTA [DAVIES] Wi

BY THE FIRESIDE.

WINTER.

117

BY THE FIRESIDE.

WHEN skies are cold with wintry stars, and hills
Are white with yester-even's snow, and lie
In ghostly state beneath the ghostly sky;
When many a gusty blast the darkness fills
With ever lonely, homeless sound, and chills
The window panes with frost; when crackling fly
The sparks about the hearth, and glow and die,
While in the pause his note the cricket trills;
Oh, then how dear is home! and what a sense
Of ruddy warmth and peace beguiles the mind!
And what a charm in listening while the wind
Blows fierce outside, through winter's starry tents,
And dies away around the window-pane,
And ever rises loud, and dies again!

ERNEST WARBURTON SHurtleff.

WINTER.

THE mill-wheel's frozen in the stream,
The church is decked with holly,
Mistletoe hangs from the kitchen beam,
To fright away melancholy;

Icicles clink in the milkmaid's pail,
Younkers skate on the pool below,
Blackbirds perch on the garden rail,

And hark, how the cold winds blow!

118

SUMMER IN WINTER.

There goes the squire to shoot at snipe,

Here runs Dick to fetch a log;

You'd swear his breath was the smoke of a pipe

In the frosty morning fog.

Hodge is breaking the ice for the kine,

Old and young cough as they go,

The round red sun forgets to shine,
And hark, how the cold winds blow!

HORACE SMITH.

SUMMER IN WINTER.

THOUGH, wrapped in quiet dreams, the gentle flowers Beneath the frosty turf are slumbering;

Though stormy Winter, stern and cruel king, Strips bare the thorny shrubs and lonely bowers Of all their bloom; though in the evening hours No happy bird flits by on silent wing,

And sings till wood and dale seem listening; Though earth is chilled by death's unfeeling powers, Yet in my heart so dear a picture glows,

Of leafy dells and rills and waving fields,
That sunlight o'er the dreary landscape steals,
And flowers seem to blossom from the snows.
"Tis thus in life that memory reveals,

Mid all our storms, some scene of sweet repose!
ERNEST WARBURTON SHURTLEFF.