34

THE ARCTIC VISITATION.

Like mourning nuns, sad-robed, funereal, bowed, Day followed day; the birds their quavering

notes

Piped here and there from feeble, querulous throats.

Fierce cold beneath, — above, one riftless cloud

Wrapped the mute world-for now all winds had died

And, locked in ice, the fettered forests gave

No sign of life; as silent as the grave Gloomed the dim, desolate landscape far and wide.

Gazing on these, from out the mist one day

I saw, a shadow on the shadowy sky,

What seemed a phantom bird, that faltering nigh, Perched by the roof-tree on a withered spray;

With drooping breast he stood, and drooping head; This fateful time had wrought the minstrel wrong; Even as I gazed, our southland lord of song Dropped through the blasted branches, blasted, breathless, dead!

Yet chillier grew the gray, world-haunting shade, Through which, methought, quick, tremulous wings were heard;

Was it the ghost of that heart-broken bird Bound for a land where sunlight cannot fade?

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.

THE WINTER STORM.

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THE WINTER STORM.

VIEW now the winter storm! above, one cloud,
Black and unbroken, all the skies o'ershroud:

All where the eye delights, yet dreads to roam,
The breaking billows cast the flying foam

Upon the billows rising, all the deep

Is restless change; the waves so swelled and steep,
Breaking and sinking, and the sunken swells,

Nor one, one moment in its station dwells:
But nearer land you may the billows trace,
As if contending in their watery chase;

May watch the mightiest till the shoal they reach,
Then break and hurry to their utmost stretch;
Curled as they come, they strike with furious force,
And then, reflowing, take their grating course,
Raking the rounded flints, which ages past
Rolled by their rage, and shall to ages last.

Far off the petrel in the troubled way
Swims with her brood, or flutters in the spray;
She rises often, often drops again,

And sports at ease on the tempestuous main.

High o'er the restless deep, above the reach Of gunner's hope, vast flights of wild-ducks stretch Far as the eye can glance on either side, In a broad space and level line they glide; All in their wedge-like figures from the north, Day after day, flight after flight go forth.

In shore their passage tribes of sea-gulls urge, And drop for prey within the sweeping surge;

36

THE SNOW STORM.

Oft in the rough, opposing blast they fly

Far back, then turn, and all their force apply,
While to the storm they give their weak, complain-

ing cry;

Or clap the sleek white pinion to the breast,
And in the restless ocean dip for rest.

Darkness begins to reign; the louder wind
Appals the weak and awes the firmer mind.

From parted clouds the moon her radiance throws On the wild waves, and all the danger shows.

GEORGE CRABBE.
The Borough.

THE SNOW STORM.

WINDS from the north do blow;
See whirl and dance of snow;
Now driving, leaping down,

And whitening farm and town,

And from the leaden clouds which crowd the sky, Hiding familiar things from foot and eye.

The paths are lost and gone;

The streets have no one on

Their hidden, soundless stone,

Where piles of flakes are blown

From fields of gray, where move the viewless stars, And smokeless battle leaves no telling scars.

IN WINTER.

Still come the flakes of white,
Like blossoms pure and light,

From heaven's great orchard trees,
Which feed no humming bees,

37

Borne by the wind which shook them from their hold Down on the hills, where flocks all seek their fold.

All through the silent woods,
The trees with powdered hoods,
And foreheads calm and fair,

Are bowed like saints at prayer;

While leaning down are faded goldenrods,
With weight of spotless ermine from the gods.

And shakes the window and the massive door, And leaves the wind-swept world a whitened floor.

J. HAZARD HARTZELL.

IN WINTER.

THE keener tempests come; and fuming dun
From all the livid east, or piercing north,

Thick clouds ascend, in whose capacious womb

A vapory deluge lies, to snow congealed.

Heavy they roll their fleecy world along,

And the sky saddens with the gathered storm. Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,

At first thin wavering, till at last the flakes

Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter-robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid sun
Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid and chill,
Is one wild dazzling waste that buries wide
The works of man.

The foodless wilds

Pour forth their brown inhabitants.

The hare,

Though timorous of heart, and hard beset

By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the black heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.
Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind;
Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens

With food at will; lodge them below the storm,
And watch them strict, for from the bellowing east
In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains