But in my inmost ear is heard

The music of a holier bird;

And heavenly thoughts, as soft and white
As snowflakes, on my soul alight,
Clothing with love my lonely heart,
Healing with peace each bruised part,
Till all my being seems to be

Transfigured by their purity.

-John Townsend Trowbridge.

TO A THRUSH SINGING IN JANUARY.

WEET bird! up earliest in the morn,

Up earliest in the year,

For in the quiet mist are borne

Thy matins soft and clear.

As linnet soft, and clear as lark,
Well hast thou ta'en thy part,

Where many an ear thy notes may reach,
And here and there a heart.

The first snow-wreaths are scarcely gone
(They stayed but half a day),
The berries bright hang lingering on;
Yet thou hast learned thy lay.

One gleam, one gale of western air
Has hardly brushed thy wing;

Yet thou hast given thy welcome fair,
Good-morrow to the spring!

That sunny morning glimpse is gone,
That morning note la still;

The dun dark day comes lowering on,
The spoilers roam at will.

Yet calmly rise, and boldly strive;
The sweet bird's early song

Ere evening fall shall oft revive,
And cheer thee all day long.

Are we not sworn to serve our King?
He sworn with us to be?

The birds that chant before the spring

Are truer far than we.

-John Keble.

BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND.

LOW, blow, thou winter wind,

BLO

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly; Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly; Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly!

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh,

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly; Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly; Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly!

William Shakespeare.

THE SNOWSTORM.

O all night long the storm roared on :
The morning broke without a sun;

In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature's geometric signs,
In starry flake, and pellicle,
All day the hoary meteor fell;
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, -
A universe of sky and snow!

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 tone
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.

-John Greenleaf Whittier.

W

THE SNOWSTORM.

INDS from the north do blow;

See whirl and dance of snow;

Now driving, leaping down,

And whitening farm and town,

And, from the leaden clouds which crowd the sky, Hiding familiar things from foot and eye.

The paths are lost and gone;

The streets have no one on
Their hidden, soundless stone,

Where piles of flakes are blown

From fields of gray, where move the viewless stars, And smokeless battle leaves no telling scars.

Still come the flakes of white,
Like blossoms pure and light,

From heaven's great orchard trees,

Which feed no humming bees,

Borne by the wind which shook them from their hold Down on the hills, where flocks all seek their fold.

All through the silent woods,
The trees with powdered hoods,
And foreheads calm and fair,

Are bowed like saints at prayer;

While leaning down are faded goldenrods,

With weight of spotless ermine from the gods.

Night comes without a moon
To light the sky of gloom;

The rushing storm sweeps past

On wild and reinless blast,

And shakes the window and the massive door, And leaves the wind-swept world a whitened floor.