The Snow-Storm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the Snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed

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,

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.

Southey

The First of December.

THOUGH no more the musing ear
Delights to listen to the breeze
That lingers o'er the 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-colored grove,

THE FIRST OF DECEMBER.

295

And pleasant to the sobered soul

The silence of the wintry scene,

When Nature shrouds herself, entranced
In deep tranquillity.

Not undelightful now to roam,

The wild heath sparkling on the sight;

Not undelightful now to pass

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,

Or o'er the gray stone spreads;

And see 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 former aid;
So 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.

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 be revived from Winter's grave; Expand the bursting bud again,

And bid the flowers re-bloom.

On a Forget-Me-Not,

BROUGHT FROM SWITZERLAND.

Mrs. Kemble.

FLOWER of the mountain! by the wanderer's hand

Robb'd of thy beauty's short-lived sunny day;

Did'st thou but blow to gem the stranger's way, And bloom to wither in the stranger's land?

Hueless and scentless as thou art,

How much that stirs the memory,

How much, much more, that thrills the heart,
Thou faded thing, yet lives in thee!

Where is thy beauty? In the grassy blade

There lives more fragrance and more freshness now;

Yet oh! not all the flowers that bloom and fade

Are half so dear to memory's eye as thou.
The dew that on the mountain lies,

The breeze that o'er the mountain sighs,
Thy parent stem will nurse and nourish,

But thou-not e'en those sunny eyes,
As bright, as blue as thine own skies,
Thou faded thing! can make thee flourish.