T

HOUGH now no more the musing ear

Delights to listen to the breeze,

That lingers o'er the greenwood shade,

I love thee, Winter, well.

Sweet are the harmonies of Spring,
Sweet is the Summer's evening gale,
And sweet the Autumnal winds that shake
The many-coloured grove.

And pleasant to the sobered soul

The silence of the wintry scene,

When Nature shrouds herself, entranced

In deep tranquillity.

MORAL REFLECTIONS ON WINTER.

Not undelightful now to roam

The wild heath sparkling on the sight;
Not undelightful now to pace

The forest's ample rounds:

And see the spangled branches shine,
And mark the moss of many a hue,
That varies the old tree's brown bark,
As o'er the grey stone spreads ;

And mark the clustered berries bright,
Amid the holly's gay green leaves;
The ivy round the leafless oak
That clasps its foliage close.

So Virtue, diffident of strength,
Clings to Religion's firmer aid,
And by Religion's aid upheld
Endures calamity.

Nor void of beauties now the spring
Whose waters hid from summer sun,
Have soothed the thirsty pilgrim's ear
With more than melody.

The green moss shines with icy glare; The long grass bends its spear-like form; And lovely is the silvery scene

Where faint the sunbeams smile.

Reflection, too, may love the hour
When Nature, hid in Winter's grave,
No more expands the bursting bud,
Or bids the floweret bloom.

For Nature soon in Spring's best charms
Shall rise revived from Winter's grave,
Expand the bursting bud again,
And bid the flower re-bloom.

W

SNOW-BOUND.

ITHIN our beds awhile we heard

The wind that round the gables roared,

With now and then a ruder shock,

Which made our very bedsteads rock.

SNOW-BOUND.

We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,

And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

Next morn we wakened with the shout

Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near,
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hill-side treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.

Before our door the straggling train Drew up, an added team to gain. The elders threshed their hands a-cold, Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes From lip to lip; the younger folks Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled. Then toiled again the cavalcade

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,

And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.

Τ

WINTER DECORATIONS.

HOU hast thy beauties: sterner ones, I own,
Than those of thy precursors; yet to thee
Belong the charms of solemn majesty

And naked grandeur. Awful is the tone

Of thy tempestuous nights, when clouds are blown
By hurrying winds across the troubled sky;
Pensive, when softer breezes faintly sigh

Through leafless boughs with ivy overgrown.