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(From The Seasons: Winter)
BUT what is this? our infant Winter sinks, | |
| Divested of his grandeur, should our eye | |
| Astonished shoot into the frigid zone; | |
| Where, for relentless months, continual Night | |
| Holds o’er the glittering waste her starry reign | 5 |
| There, through the prison of unbounded wilds, | |
| Barred by the hand of Nature from escape, | |
| Wide roams the Russian exile. Naught around | |
| Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow; | |
| And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods, | 10 |
| That stretch athwart the solitary waste, | |
| Their icy horrors to the frozen main, | |
| And cheerless towns far distant, never blessed, | |
| Save when its annual course the caravan | |
| Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay, | 15 |
| With news of humankind. Yet there life glows; | |
| Yet cherished there beneath the shining waste, | |
| The furry nations harbor: tipped with jet, | |
| Fair ermines, spotless as the snows they press; | |
| Sables of glossy black; and dark-embrowned, | 20 |
| Or beauteous freaked with many a mingled hue, | |
| Thousands besides, the costly pride of courts. | |
| There, warm together pressed, the trooping deer | |
| Sleep on the new-fallen snows; and scarce his head | |
| Raised o’er the heapy wreath, the branching elk | 25 |
| Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss. | |
| The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils, | |
| Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives | |
| The fearful flying race; with ponderous clubs, | |
| As weak against the mountain-heaps they push | 30 |
| Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray, | |
| He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows, | |
| And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home. | |
| There through the piny forest half absorbed, | |
| Rough tenant of these shades, the shapeless bear, | 35 |
| With dangling ice all horrid, stalks forlorn; | |
| Slow-paced, and sourer as the storms increase, | |
| He makes his bed beneath the inclement drift, | |
| And, with stern patience, scorning weak complaint, | |
| Hardens his heart against assailing want. | 40 |
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