When frost's all on our winder, an' the snow's
All out-o'-doors, our "Old-Kriss"-milkman goes
A-drivin' round, ist purt'-nigh froze to death,
With his old white mustache froze full o' breath.

But when it's summer an' all warm ag'in,
He comes a-whistlin' an' a-drivin in
Our alley, 'thout no coat on, ner ain't cold,
Ner his mustache ain't white, ner he ain't old.

It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud:
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns -
It's the MUD,
        MUD,
        MUD.

It isn't the melee we mind.
That often is rather good fun.
It isn't the shrapnel we find
Obtrusive when rained by the ton;
It isn't the bounce of the bombs
That gives us a positive pain:
It's the strafing we get
When the weather is wet -
It's the RAIN,
        RAIN,
            RAIN.

It isn't because we lack grit
We shrink from the horrors of war.
We don't mind the battle a bit;
In fact that is what we are for;
It isn't the ...

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;
- If all organic things
Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,
What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite
From this bleak spot of thorn,
And birch, and fir, and frozen white
Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought!
Your dust will not regain
Old sunny haunts of Classic thought
When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit
With frigid Boreal flame,
And not a sign remain in it
To tell men whence you came.

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best,
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bare-headed, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here -
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the la...

Checq'd Autumn, doubly sweet is thy declining,
To meditate within this 'wilder'd shade;
To view the wood in its pied lustre shining,
And catch thy varied beauties as they fade;
Where o'er broad hazel-leaves thy pencil mellows,
Red as the glow that morning's opening warms,
And ash or maple 'neath thy colour yellows,
Robbing some sunbeam of its setting charms:
I would say much of what now meets my eye,
But beauties lose me in variety.
O for the warmth of soul and 'witching measure,
Expressing semblance, Poesy, which is thine,
And Genius' eye to view this transient treasure,
That Autumn here might lastingly decline.

Sweet chestnuts brown like soling leather turn;
The larch trees, like the colour of the Sun;
That paled sky in the Autumn seemed to burn,
What a strange scene before us now does run--
Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black, and dun;
White thorn, wild cherry, and the poplar bare;
The sycamore all withered in the sun.
No leaves are now upon the birch tree there:
All now is stript to the cold wintry air.

See, not one tree but what has lost its leaves--
And yet the landscape wears a pleasing hue.
The winter chill on his cold bed receives
Foliage which once hung oer the waters blue.
Naked and bare the leafless trees repose.
Blue-headed titmouse now seeks maggots rare,
Sluggish and dull the leaf-strewn river flows;
That is not green, which was so through the ye...

    Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
    Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel -
    Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens -
    But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
    The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
    And what is love but a rose that fades?
    Life all around me here in the village:
    Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
    Courage, constancy, heroism, failure -
    All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
    Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers -
    Blind to all of it all my life long.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
    W...

Winter is fallen early
On the house of Stare;
Birds in reverberating flocks
Haunt its ancestral box;
Bright are the plenteous berries
In clusters in the air.

Still is the fountain's music,
The dark pool icy still,
Whereupon a small and sanguine sun
Floats in a mirror on,
Into a West of crimson,
From a South of daffodil.

'Tis strange to see young children
In such a wintry house;
Like rabbits' on the frozen snow
Their tell-tale footprints go;
Their laughter rings like timbrels
'Neath evening ominous:

Their small and heightened faces
Like wine-red winter buds;
Their frolic bodies gentle as
Flakes in the air that pass,
Frail as the twirling petal
From the briar of the woods.

Above them silence lours,<...

Lulled by the sound of pastoral bells,
Rude Nature's Pilgrims did we go,
From the dread summit of the Queen
Of mountains, through a deep ravine,
Where, in her holy chapel, dwells
"Our Lady of the Snow."

The sky was blue, the air was mild;
Free were the streams and green the bowers;
As if, to rough assaults unknown,
The genial spot had 'ever' shown
A countenance that as sweetly smiled--
The face of summer-hours.

And we were gay, our hearts at ease;
With pleasure dancing through the frame
We journeyed; all we knew of care--
Our path that straggled here and there;
Of trouble--but the fluttering breeze;
Of Winter--but a name.

If foresight could have rent the veil
Of three short days--but hush--no more!
Calm is the grave, and c...

Sweet solitude, what joy to be alone--
In wild, wood-shady dell to stay for hours.
Twould soften hearts if they were hard as stone
To see glad butterflies and smiling flowers.
Tis pleasant in these quiet lonely places,
Where not the voice of man our pleasure mars,
To see the little bees with coal black faces
Gathering sweets from little flowers like stars.

The wind seems calling, though not understood.
A voice is speaking; hark, it louder calls.
It echoes in the far-outstretching wood.
First twas a hum, but now it loudly squalls;
And then the pattering rain begins to fall,
And it is hushed--the fern leaves scarcely shake,
The tottergrass it scarcely stirs at all.
And then the rolling thunder gets awake,
And from black clouds the lightning flashes break.<...

Wantons we are, and though our words be such,
Our lives do differ from our lines by much.

Last night we were kept awake.
Could n't sleep for Old Jack Frost;
Wandering round like some old ghost.
Gave the door an awful shake;
Knocked against my bed's brass post.
Last night we were kept awake.
Could n't sleep he made such noise;
Rapped and tapped and prowled around.
Once he made a snapping sound
Just like that of breaking toys.
You'd been scared, too, I'll be bound.
Could n't sleep he made such noise.
All was dark and very still,
When, right at the window, "bing,"
Came a rap that made me sing,
"Mother, I'm afraid!" until
Mother fussed like everything.
All was dark and very still.
"Old Jack Frost is raising Ned.
And to-morrow, wish to state,
We'll get even sure as fate;
Cure him of his tricks," she said;
"Start a fire in t...

    "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
    That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm!
    How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
    Your looped and widow'd raggedness defend you
    From seasons such as these?"

Shakspeare.


    When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
    Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r;
    When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r
        Far south the lift,
    Dim-darkening through the flaky show'r,
        Or whirling drift:

    Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,
    Poor labour sweet in sleep was locked,
    While burns, wi' snawy wreeths up-choked,
        Wild-eddying swirl.
    Or through the mining outlet bocked,
        Down headlong hurl.

    Listening, the doors an' win...

Now overhead,
Where the rivulet loiters and stops,
The bittersweet hangs from the tops
Of the alders and cherries
Its bunches of beautiful berries,
Orange and red.

And the snowbirds flee,
Tossing up on the far brown field,
Now flashing and now concealed,
Like fringes of spray
That vanish and gleam on the gray
Field of the sea.

Flickering light,
Come the last of the leaves down borne,
And patches of pale white corn
In the wind complain,
Like the slow rustle of rain
Noticed by night.

Withered and thinned,
The sentinel mullein looms,
With the pale gray shadowy plumes
Of the goldenrod;
And the milkweed opens its pod,
Tempting the wind.

Aloft on the hill,
A cloudrift opens and shines
Through ...

This is a wild land, country of my choice,
    With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any voice
    But voice of cold water that runs here and there
    Through rocks and lank heather growing without care.
No mice in the heath run nor no birds cry
For fear of the dark speck that floats in the sky.

He soars and he hovers rocking on his wings,
    He scans his wide parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden things,
    He tears them in pieces, dropping from the sky:
    Tenderness and pity the land will deny,
Where life is but nourished from water and rock
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.

Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
    Crakeberries and heather bloom out of date,

Thus I
Pass by,
And die:
As one
Unknown
And gone:
I'm made
A shade,
And laid
I' th' grave:
There have
My cave,
Where tell
I dwell.
Farewell.

Child of the clouds! remote from every taint
Of sordid industry thy lot is cast;
Thine are the honours of the lofty waste
Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint,
Thy handmaid Frost with spangled tissue quaint
Thy cradle decks; to chant thy birth, thou hast
No meaner Poet than the whistling Blast,
And Desolation is thy Patron-saint!
She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare
Those mighty forests, once the bison's screen,
Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair
Through paths and alleys roofed with darkest green;
Thousands of years before the silent air
Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen!

God made a little gentian;
It tried to be a rose
And failed, and all the summer laughed.
But just before the snows
There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill;
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition;
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it.
"Creator! shall I bloom?"