WINTER.- A WINTRY SONNET.
SING O and alas!
O! when will the winter pass?
When will the bitter wind be gone
And the glistering of the sun
Free the streams that are chained in ice,
Shine upon the dead-cold face
Of the sleeping Earth, and entice
Coy buds from their hiding-place?
It is dull and drear
While the lazy Year
Sleeps close enwrapt in his snowy pall:
What does it matter?
The bleak white winter is over them all.
CHARLES GIPPS PROWETT.
The Shepherd Lord.
A WINTRY SONNET.
A ROBIN said: The Spring will never come,
And I shall never care to build again.
A Rosebush said: These frosts are wearisome,
My sap will never stir for sun or rain.
The round Moon said: These nights are fogged and slow,
I neither care to wax nor care to wane.
The Ocean said: I thirst from long ago, Because earth's rivers cannot fill the m
When Springtime came, red Robin built a And trilled a lover's song in sheer deli Grey hoarfrost vanished, and the Rose Clothed her in leaves and buds of crim The dim Moon brightened. Ocean sunne Dimpled his blue, yet thirsted everm CHRISTINA GEORGIN.
MOTHER'S WINTER-NIGHT SO
SLEEP, my babe, my darling, sleep and
Warmly folded to my breast.
Though the night-wind blows,
And the still, white snows
Fill the robin's empty nest,
Sleep, my babe, my darling, sleep and r
Gentle slumber parts thy dewy mouth:
Far away in bloomy south
Little robin red
Trills, and turns his head;
But thy song's as sweet, little dewy mout
Warm thy nest, as robin's in the south.
MRS. ZADEL [BARNES] C
IN THE LIBRARY IN WINTER.
Now, amid all the rigors of the year,
In the wild depth of winter, while without
The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat,
Between the groaning forest and the shore,
Beat by the boundless multitude of waves, —
A rural, sheltered, solitary scene,
Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join
To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty dead;
Sages of ancient time, as gods revered,
As gods beneficent, who blessed mankind
With arts, with arms, and humanized a world.
JAMES THOMSON.
The Seasons.
THE DEATH OF ARNKEL.
ACROSS the roaring board in Helgafell,
Above the clash of ringing horns of ale,
The guests of Snorri, reddened with the frost,
Weighed all their comrades through a winter night,
Disputing which was first in thew and brain
And courteous acts of manhood; some averred
Their host, the shifty Snorri, first of men,
While some were bent to Arnkel, some to Styrr.
Then Thorleif Kimbi shouted down the hall,
"Folly and windy talk! the stalwart limbs
Of Styrr, and that sharp goodly face of thine,
All-cunning Snorri, make one man, not twain,
One man in friendship and in rede, not twain,
Nor that man worthy to be named for skill,
Or strength, or beauty, or for popular arts,
With Arnkel, son of Thorolf, the grim ghost.
Wit has he, though not lacking wherewithal
In sinew; see to it, comrades, lest he crush
The savage leaders of our oligarchy,
Vast, indolent, mere iron masks of men,
Unfit for civic uses; his the hand
To gather all our forces like the reins
Of patient steeds, and drive us at his will,
Unless we stir betimes and are his foes."
So from his turbulent mouth the shaft struck home,
Venomed with envy and the jealous pride
Of birth; and ere they roared themselves to rest,
The chieftains vowed that Arnkel must be slain.
Nor waited many days; for one clear night
Freystein, the spy, as near his sheep he watched,
Saw Arnkel fetching hay from Orlygstad,
With three young thralls of his own household folk,
And left the fold, and crept across the fell,
And wakened from their first sweet midnight sleep
The sons of Thorbrand, and went on, and roused
Snorri, who dreamed of blood and dear revenge.
Then through the frosty moonlit night they sped, Warmed to the heart with hopes of murderous play, Nine men from Snorri's house; and by the sea
At Altopfjord they met the six men armed
With Thorlief; scarcely greeted they, but skimmed
Along the black shore of the flashing fjord,
Lit by the large moon in a cloudless sky;
Over the swelling, waning ice they flew,
Grinding the tufts of grass beneath their sleighs,
So silent, that the twigs of juniper
Snapped under them, sharp, like a cracking whip,
Echoing, and so to Orlygstad they came.
But Arnkel saw them through the cold bright air, And turned, and bade the three young thralls haste home,
To bring back others of their kith to fight;
So, maddened by base fear, they rushed, and one
Or ever he neared the homestead, as he fled,
Slipped on the forehead of a mountain force,
And volleying down from icy plane to plane,
Woke all the echoes of that waterfall,
And died, while numb with fright the others ran.
But Arnkel bowed, and loosened from his sleigh
The iron runner with its shining point,
And leaped upon the fence, and set his back
Against the hay-stack; through the frosty night
Its warm deep odor passed into his brain.
But Snorri and his fellows with no word
Sprang from their sleighs, and met below the fence,
And reaching upward with their brawny arms,
Smote hard at Arnkel. With the runner he,
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