All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian toue
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voiced elements,

The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth

No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick ;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed;
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea."

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black Against the whiteness at their back. For such a world and such a night Most fitting that unwarming light, Which only seemed where'er it fell To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood.

THE day had been a calm and sunny day.
And tinged with amber was the sky at even;
The fleecy clouds at length had rolled away,

And lay in furrows on the eastern heaven ;
The moon arose and shed a glimmering ray,
And round her orb a misty circle lay.

The hoar-frost glittered on the naked heath,
The roar of distant winds was loud and deep,
The dry leaves rustled in each passing breath,
And the gay world was lost in quiet sleep.
Such was the time when, on the landscape brown,
Through a December air the snow came down.

The morning came, the dreary morn, at last, And showed the whitened waste. The shiv. ering herd

Lowed on the hoary meadow-ground, and fast Fell the light flakes upon the earth unstirred; The forest firs with glittering snows o'erlaid Stood like hoar priests in robes of white arrayed.

JOHN HOWARD BRYANT.

WINTER PICTURES.

FROM "THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL."

DOWN swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;
It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;
The little brook heard it and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams
He groined his arches and matched his beams;
Slender and clear were his crystal spars
As the lashes of light that trim the stars :
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,

Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew ;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and
here

He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops
And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
Which crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one :

No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this winter-palace of ice;
'T was as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day.
Each flitting shadow of earth and sky,

Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry
By the elfin builders of the frost.

Within the hall are song and laughter,

The checks of Christmas grow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter

With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide ; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,

Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little troops of silent sparks,

Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer.

But the wind without was eager and sharp,
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp,
And rattles and rings
The icy strings,

Singing, in dreary monotone,
A Christmas carol of its own,

Whose burden still, as he might guess,

Was "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night

The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light

Against the drift of the cold.

FROM "THE SEASONS: WINTER."

THE keener tempests rise; 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

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 wide dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil.. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is:
Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
Attract his slender feet. 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 man, the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening
earth,

With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.

JAMES THOMSON.

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

;

Come see the north-wind's masonry! Out of an unseen quarry, evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake or tree or door; Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage; naught cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Some two or three feet, or more;
The fence was lost, and the wall of stone;
The windows blocked and the well-curbs gone;
The haystack had grown to a mountain lift,
And the wood-pile looked like a monster drift,
As it lay by the farmer's door.

The night sets in on a world of snow,
While the air grows sharp and chill,
And the warning roar of a fearful blow
Is heard on the distant hill;
And the norther, see! on the mountain peak
In his breath how the old trees writhe and shriek!
He shouts on the plain, ho-ho! ho-ho!
He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow,
And growls with a savage will.

Such a night as this to be found abroad,

In the drifts and the freezing air,

Sits a shivering dog, in the field, by the road,
With the snow in his shaggy hair.

He shuts his eyes to the wind and growls ;
He lifts his head, and moans and howls;
Then crouching low, from the cutting sleet,
His nose is pressed on his quivering feet, —
Pray, what does the dog do there?

A farmer came from the village plain,
But he lost the travelled way;
And for hours he trod with might and main
A path for his horse and sleigh;
But colder still the cold winds blew,
And deeper still the deep drifts grew,
And his mare, a beautiful Morgan brown,
At last in her struggles floundered down,
Where a log in a hollow lay.

In vain, with a neigh and a frenzied snort.
She plunged in the drifting snow,
While her master urged, till his breath grew short,
With a word and a gentle blow;

But the snow was deep, and the tugs were tight;
His hands were numb and had lost their might;
So he wallowed back to his half-filled sleigh,
And strove to shelter himself till day,

With his coat and the buffalo.

He has given the last faint jerk of the rein, To rouse up his dying steed;

And the poor dog howls to the blast in vain, For help in his master's need.

For a while he strives with a wistful cry
To catch a glance from his drowsy eye,
And wags his tail if the rude winds flap
The skirt of the buffalo over his lap,

And whines when he takes no heed.
The wind goes down and the storm is o'er, -
'Tis the hour of midnight, past;
The old trees writhe and bend no more

In the whirl of the rushing blast. The silent moon with her peaceful light Looks down on the hills with snow all white, And the giant shadow of Camel's Hump, The blasted pine and the ghostly stump,

Afar on the plain are cast.

But cold and dead by the hidden log

Are they who came from the town,
The man in his sleigh, and his faithful dog,
And his beautiful Morgan brown,

In the wide snow-desert, far and grand,
With his cap on his head and the reins in his

O WINTER! WILT THOU NEVER GO! O WINTER! wilt thou never, never go? O summer! but I weary for thy coming, Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, And frugal bees, laboriously humming. Now the east-wind diseases the infirm, And must crouch in corners from rough weather; Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm, When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, And the large sun dips red behind the hills. I, from my window, can behold this pleasure; And the eternal moon, what time she fills Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, With queenly motions of a bridal mood, Through the white spaces of infinitude.

DAVIS GRAY.

VIEW FROM THE EUGANEAN HILLS,*
NORTH ITALY.

MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on
Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way,

The lonely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch.