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—IN the frosty season, when the sun | |
| Was set, and, visible for many a mile, | |
| The cottage windows through the twilight blazed, | |
| I heeded not the summons: happy time | |
| It was indeed for all of us; for me | 5 |
| It was a time of rapture. Clear and loud | |
| The village clock tolled six. I wheel’d about, | |
| Proud and exulting, like an untired horse | |
| That cares not for its home. All shod with steel, | |
| We hiss’d along the polish’d ice in games | 10 |
| Confederate, imitative of the chase | |
| And woodland pleasures,—the resounding horn, | |
| The pack loud-bellowing, and the hunted hare. | |
| So through the darkness and the cold we flew, | |
| And not a voice was idle: with the din | 15 |
| Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud; | |
| The leafless trees and every icy crag | |
| Tingled like iron; while the distant hills | |
| Into the tumult sent an alien sound | |
| Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars, | 20 |
| Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west | |
| The orange sky of evening died away. | |
| |
| Not seldom from the uproar I retired | |
| Into a silent bay, or sportively | |
| Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, | 25 |
| To cut across the image of a star | |
| That gleam’d upon the ice; and oftentimes, | |
| When we had given our bodies to the wind, | |
| And all the shadowy banks on either side | |
| Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still | 30 |
| The rapid line of motion, then at once | |
| Have I, reclining back upon my heels, | |
| Stopp’d short; yet still the solitary cliffs | |
| Wheel’d by me, even as if the earth had roll’d | |
| With visible motion her diurnal round. | 35 |
| Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, | |
| Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watch’d | |
| Till all was tranquil as a summer sea. | |
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