Occasionally Happening in the Winter Months
Th’ imprison’d winds slumber within their caves,Fast bound: the fickle vane, emblem of change,Wavers no more, long settling to a point.
All Nature nodding seems composed: thick steams,From land, from flood up-drawn, dimming the day,“Like a dark ceiling stand:” slow through the airGossamer floats, or, stretch’d from blade to blade,The wavy net-work whitens all the field.
Push’d by the weightier atmosphere, up springsThe ponderous mercury, from scale to scaleMounting, amidst the Torricellian tube.
While high in air, and poised upon his wings,Unseen, the soft, enamour’d woodlark runsThrough all his maze of melody; the brake,Loud with the blackbird’s bolder note, resounds.
Sooth’d by the genial warmth, the cawing rookAnticipates the spring, selects her mate,Haunts her tall nest-trees, and with sedulous careRepairs her wicker eyrie, tempest-torn.
The ploughman inly smiles to see upturnHis mellow globe, best pledge of future crop:With glee the gardener eyes his smoking beds;E’en pining sickness feels a short relief
The happy schoolboy brings transported forthHis long-forgotten scourge, and giddy gig:O’er the white paths he whirls the rolling hoop,Or triumphs in the dusty fields of taw.
Not so the museful sage:—abroad he walksContemplative, if haply he may findWhat cause controls the tempest’s rage, or whence,Amidst the savage season, Winter smiles.
For days, for weeks, prevails the placid calm.At length some drops prelude a change: the sunWith ray refracted, bursts the parting gloom,When all the chequer’d sky is one bright glare.
Mutters the wind at eve; th’ horizon roundWith angry aspect scowls: down rush the showers,And float the deluged paths, and miry fields.