Winter
Old Winter is come , spreading ice on the moor,
And wailing like woe at the cottager’s door.
He has blighted the heather that bloomed on the hill,
Stalked down in the valley and glassed o’er the rill,
Sipped up the clear pools with their moss–cover’d brim,
And placed his cold hand on the daisy’s white rim.
Old Winter, old Winter, come, hie thee away,
And let the soft breeze with the daffodils play.
O look on the trees! They are leafless and bare;
Not a bud, not a blossom, of beauty is there,
Hoarse wails through the branches eternally go,
And the cot in the valley is covered in snow;
While down from the eaves, hang the icicles cold,
And cock robin mourns on the sleety threshold,
Old Winter, old Winter, come, hie thee away
And let the sunbeams with the gossamer play.
But, ha! It is vain to invoke him to go;
For the crest of the hill is a cold wreath of snow,
Wherever I look, ‘tis the same to my sight,
Mede, mountain, and moorland are mantled in white;
In his palace of ice, at the back of the rock,
He moans that the crag heaps seem rent with the shock
Old Winter, old winter, O leave our dear land,
And revel where ice-hills eternally stand
The grey-headed man, clad in rags as he goes,
And the water-cress girl, with the frost in her toes,
I saw them today creeping down the dark lane,
And they trembled with cold, and were weeping with pain
Thou hast but a season, old Winter to roar,
And then I know surely thy reign will be o’er,
And thou must be off to the frost-bitten zone,
And beautiful Spring have thy sceptre and throne.
