All Winter drives along the darken'd air ;
In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain
Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain:
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts
of home

Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soal!
What black despair, what horrour, fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track, and blest abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest, howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent beyond the power of frost ;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,

Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,

What water of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils,
These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah, little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;

Ah, little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death
And all the sad variety of pain.
How many sink in the devouring flood,
Or more devouring flame. How many bleed,
By shameful variance betwixt man and man.
How many pine in want, and dungeon glooms;
Shut from the common air, and common use
Of their own limbs. How many drink the eup
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of misery. Sore pierc'd by wintery winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty. How many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse;
Whence tumbled headlong from the height of life,
They furnish matter for the tragic Muse.
Ev'n in the vale, where Wisdom loves to dwell
With Friendship, Peace, and Contemplation join'd,

How many, rack'd with honest passions, droop
In deep retir'd distress. How many stand
Around the death-bed of their dearest friends,
And point the parting anguish. Thought foud man
Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills,
That one incessant struggle render life,
One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would stand appall'd,
And heedless rambling Impulse learn to think;
The conscious heart of Charity would warm,
And her wide wish Benevolence dilate;
The social tear would rise, the social sigh;
And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
Refining still, the social passions work.

And here can I forget the generous band',
Who, touch'd with human woe, redressive search'd
Into the horrours of the gloomy jail ?
Unpitied, and unheard, where misery moans;
Where sickness pines; where thirst and hunger
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice. [burn,
While in the land of liberty, the land
Whose every street and public meeting glow
With open freedom, little tyrants rag'd;
Snatch'd the lean morsel from the starving month;
Tore from cold wintery limbs the tatter'd weed i
Ev'n robb'd them of the last of comforts, sleep;
The free-born Briton to the dungeon chain'd,
Or, as the lust of cruelty prevail'd,

At pleasure mark'd him with inglorious stripes:
And crush'd out lives, by secret barbarous ways,
That for their country would have toil'd, or bled.
O, great design! if executed well,
With patient care, and wisdom-temper'd zeal.
Ye sons of mercy! yet resume the search;
Drag forth the legal monsters into light,
Wrench from their hands oppression's iron rod,
And bid the cruel feel the pains they give.
Much still untouch'd remains; in this rank age,
Much is the patriot's weeding hand requir'd.
The toils of law, (what dark insidious men
Have cumberous added to perplex the truth,
And lengthen simple justice into trade)
How glorious were the day! that saw these broke,
And every man within the reach of right.

By wintery famine rous'd, from all the tract
Of horrid mountains which the shining Alps,
And wavy Appennine, and Pyrenees,
Branch out stupendous into distant lands;
Cruel as Death, and hungry as the Grave!
Burning for blood! bony, and gaunt, and grim!
Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;
And, pouring o'er the country, bear along,
Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snow,
All is their prize. They fasten on the steed,
1'ress him to earth, and pierce his mighty heart.
Nor can the bull his awful front defend,
Or shake the murdering savages away.
Rapacious, at the mother's throat they fly,
And tear the screaming infant from her breast.
The godlike face of man avails him nought.
E'vn Beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance
The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze,
Here bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey.
But if, appriz'd of the severe attack,
The country be shut up, lur'd by the scent,
Ou church-yards drear (inhuman to relate !)
The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig
The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,

The Jail Committee, in the year 1729.

Mix'd with foul shades, and frighted ghosts, they howl.

Among those hilly regions, where embrac'd In peaceful vales the happy Grisons dwell, Oft, rushing sudden from the loaded cliffs, Mountains of snow their gathering terrours roll. From steep to steep, loud-thundering down they

come,

A wintery waste in dire commotion all;

And herds, and flocks, and travellers, and swains,
And sometimes whole brigades of marching troops,
Or hamlets sleeping in the dead of night,
Are deep beneath the smothering ruin whelm'd.

Now all amid the rigours of the year,
In the wild depth of Winter, while without
The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat,
Between the groaning forest and the shore
Beat by the boundless multitude of waves,
A rural, shelter'd, solitary scene;
Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join,
To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty dead;
Sages of ancient time, as gods rever'd,
As gods beneficent, who blest mankind
With arts, with arms, and humaniz'd a world.
Rous'd at th' inspiring thought, I throw aside
The long-liv'd volume; and, deep musing, hail
The sacred shades, that slowly-rising pass
Before my wondering eyes. First Socrates,
Who, firmly good in a corrupted state,
Against the rage of tyrants single stood,
Invincible! calm reason's holy law,
That voice of God within th' attentive mind,
Obeying, fearless, or in life, or death:
Great moral teacher! wisest of mankind!
Solon the next, who built his common-weal
On equity's wide base; by tender laws
A lively people curbing, yet undamp'd,
Preserving still that quick peculiar fire,
Whence in the laurel'd field of finer arts,
And of bold freedom, they unequal'd shone,
The pride of smiling Greece, and human-kind.
Lycurgus then, who bow'd beneath the force
Of strictest discipline, severely wise,
All human passions. Following him, I see,
As at Thermopyla he glorious fell,

The firm devoted chief, who prov'd by deeds
The hardest lesson which the other taught.
Then Aristides lifts his honest front;
Spotless of heart, to whom th' unflattering voice
Of freedom gave the noblest name of just;
In pure majestic poverty rever'd;

Who, ev'n his glory to his country's weal
Submitting, swell'd a haughty rival's fame.
Rear'd by his care, of softer ray appears
Cimon, sweet-soul'd; whose genius, rising strong,
Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad
The scourge of Persian pride, at home the friend
Of every worth and every splendid art;
Modest and simple in the pomp of wealth.
Then the last worthies of declining Grecce,
Late call'd to glory, in unequal times,
Pensive, appear.

The fair Corinthian boast,
Timoleon, happy temper! mild, and firm,
Who wept the brother while the tyrant bled.
And, equal to the best, the Theban pair',
Whose virtues, in heroic concord join'd,

2 Themistocles. Pelopidas and Epaminondas.

Leonidas.

3

VOL XII.

Their country rais'd to freedom, empire, fame.
He too, with whom Athenian honour sunk;
And left a mass of sordid lees behind,
Phocion the good; in public life severe,
To virtue still inexorably firm;

But when, beneath his low illustrious roof,
Sweet peace and happy wisdom smooth'd his brow,
Not friendship softer was, nor love more kind.
And he, the last of old Lycurgus' sons,
The generous victim to that vain attempt,
To save a rotten state, Agis, who saw
Ev'n Sparta's self to servile avarice sunk.
The two Achaian heroes close the train :
Aratus, who a while relum'd the soul
Of fondly lingering liberty in Greece:
And he her darling, as her latest hope,
The gallant Philopomen; who to arts
Turn'd the luxious pomp he could not cure;
Or toiling in his farm a simple swain ;
Or bold and skilful, thundering in the field.

Of rougher front, a mighty people come !
A race of heroes! in those virtuous times,
Which knew no stain, save that with partial flame
Their dearest country they too fondly lov'd:
Her better founder first, the light of Rome,
Numa, who soften'd her rapacious sons :
Servius the king, who laid the solid base
Ou which o'er Earth the vast republic spread.
Then the great consuls venerable rise.
The public father' who the private quell'd,
As on the dread tribunal sternly sad.

He, whom his thankless country could not lose,
Camillus, only vengeful to his foes.
Fabricius, scorner of all-conquering gold;
And Cincinnatus, aweful from the plough.
Thy willing victim', Carthage, bursting loose
From all that pleading Nature could oppose,
From a whole city's tears, by rigid faith
Imperious call'd, and honour's dire command
Scipio, the gentle chief, humanely brave,
Who soon the race of spotless glory ran,
And warm in youth, to the poetic shade
With Friendship and Philosophy retir'd.
Tully, whose powerful eloquence a while
Restrain'd the rapid fate of rushing Rome.
Unconquer'd Cato, virtuous in extreme.
And thou, unhappy Brutus, kind of heart,
Whose steady arin, by aweful virtue urg'd,
Lifted the Roman steel against thy friend.
Thousands besides the tribute of a verse
Demand; but who can count the stars of Heaven è
Who sing their influence on this lower world?

Behold, who yonder comes! in sober state,
Fair, mild, and strong, as is a vernal sun :
'Tis Phoebus self, or else the Mantuan Swain!
Great Homer too appears, of daring wing,
Parent of song! and equal by his side,
The British Muse; join'd hand in hand they walk,
Darkling, full up the middle steep to Fame.
Nor absent are those shades, whose skilful touch
Pathetic drew th' impassion'd heart, and charm'd
Transported Athens with the moral scene:
Nor those who, tuneful, wak'd th' enchanting lyre.
First of your kind! society divine;

Still visit thus my nights, for you reserv'd,
And mount my soaring soul to thoughts like yours
Silence, thou lonely power! the door be thine;
Sec on the hallow'd hour that none intrude,

Then drest by thee, more amiably fair,
Truth the soft robe of mild persuasion wears:
Thou to assenting reason giv'st again [heart,
Her own enlighten'd thoughts; call'd from the
Th' obedient passions on thy voice attend;
And ev'n reluctant party feels a while

Thy gracious power: as through the varied maze
Of eloquence, now smooth, now quick, now strong,
Profound and clear, you roll the copious flood.

To thy lov'd haunt return, my happy Muse: For now, behold, the joyous winter-days, Frosty, succeed; and through the blue serene, For sight too fine, th' etherial nitre flies; Killing infectious damps, and the spent air Storing afresh with elemental life. Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds Our strengthen'd bodies in its cold embrace, Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood; Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves, In swifter sallies darting to the brain; Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool, Bright as the skies, and as the season keen. All Nature feels the renovating force Of Winter, only to the thoughtless eye In ruin seen. The frost-concocted glebe Draws in abundant vegetable soul, And gathers vigour for the coming year. A stronger glow sits on the lively cheek Of ruddy fire: and luculent along The purer rivers flow; their sullen deeps, Transparent, open to the shepherd's gaze, And murmur hoarser at the fixing frost.

[stores

What art thou, frost? and whence are thy keen Deriv'd, thou secret all-invading power, Whom ev'n th' illusive fluid cannot fly? Is not thy potent energy, unseen, Myriads of little salts, or hook'd, or shap'd Like double wedges, and diffus'd inmense Through water, earth, and ether? Hence at eve, Steam'd eager from the red horizon round, With the fierce rage of Winter deep suffus'd, An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career Arrests the bickering stream. The loosen'd ice, Let down the flood, and half dissolv'd by day, Rustles no more; but to the sedgy bank Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed stone, A crystal pavement, by the breath of Heaven Cemented firm; till, seiz'd from shore to shore, The whole imprison'd river growls below. Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects A double noise; while, at his evening watch, The village dog deters the nightly thief; The heifer lows; the distant water-fall Swells in the breeze; and, with the hasty tread Of traveller, the hollow-sounding plain Shakes from afar. The full ethereal round, Infinite worlds disclosing to the view, Shines out intensely keen; and, all one cope Of starry glitter, glows from pole to pole. From pole to pole the rigid induence falls, Through the still night, incessant, heavy, strong, And seizes Nature fast. It freezes on; Till Morn, late-rising o'er the drooping world, Lifts her pale eye unjoyous. Then appears The various labour of the silent Night: Prone from the dripping cave, and dumb cascade, Whose idle torrents only seem to roar, The pendent icicle; the frost-work fair, Where transient hues and fancy'd figures rise,

Wide-spouted o'er the hill, the frozen brook,
A livid tract, cold-gleaming on the morn;
The forest bent beneath the plumy wave;
And by the frost refin'd the whiter snow,
Incrusted hard, and sounding to the tread
Of early shepherd, as he pensive seeks
His pining flock, or from the mountain top,
Pleas'd with the slippery surface, swift descends.

On blithsome frolicks bent, the youthful swains,
While every work of man is laid at rest,
Fond o'er the river crowd, in various sport
And revelry dissolv'd; where mixing glad,
Happiest of all the train! the raptur'd boy
Lashes the whirling top. Or, where the Rhine
Branch'd out in many a long canal extends,
From every province swarming, void of care,
Batavia rushes forth; and as they sweep,
On sounding skates, a thousand different ways,
In circling poise, swift as the winds, along,
The then gay land is madden'd all to joy.
Nor less the northern courts, wide o'er the snow,
Pour a new pomp. Eager, on rapid sleds,
Their vigorous youth in bold contention wheel
The long resounding course. Meantime, to raise
The manly strife, with highly blooming charms,
Flush'd by the season, Scandinavia's dames,
Or Russia's buxom daughters glow around.

Pure, quick, and sportful, is the wholesome day; But soon elaps'd. The horizontal Sun, Broad o'er the south, hangs at his utmost noon: And, ineffectual, strikes the gelid cliff: His azure gloss the mountain still maintains, Nor feels the feeble touch. Perhaps the vale Relents a while to the reflected ray; Or from the forest falls the cluster'd snow, Myriads of gems, that in the waving gleam Gay-twinkle as they scatter. Thick around Thunders the sport of those, who with the gun, And dog impatient bounding at the shot, Worse than the season, desolate the fields: And, adding to the ruins of the year, Distress the footed or the feather'd game.

But what is this? Our infant Winter sinks, Divested of his grandeur, should our eye Astonish'd shoot into the frigid zone; Where, for relentless months, continual Night Holds o'er the glittering waste her starry reign. There, through the prison of unbounded wilds, Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape, Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow; And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods, That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast, Their icy horrours to the frozen main; And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd, Save when its annual course the caravan Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay', With news of human-kind. Yet there life glows: Yet cherish'd there, beneath the shining waste, The furry nations harbour: tipt with jet, Fair ermines, sportless as the snows they press; Sables, of glossy black; and dark-embrown'd, Or beauteous freakt with many a mingled hue, Thousands besides, the costly pride of courts. There, warm together press'd, the trooping deer Sleep on the new-fall'n snows; and, scarce his head

Rais'd o'er the heapy wreath, the branching elk

The old name for China.

Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss.
The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils,
Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives
The fearful flying race: with ponderous clubs,
As weak against the mountain heaps they push
Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray,
He lays them quivering on th' ensanguin'd snows,
And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home.
There through the piny forest half-absorpt,
Rough tenant of these shades, the shapeless bear,
With dangling ice all horrid, stalks forlorn;
Slow-plac'd, and sourer as the storms increase,
He makes his bed beneath th' inclement drift,
And, with stern patience, scorning weak complaint,
Hardens his heart against assailing want.

Wide o'er the spacious regions of the north,
That sees Boötes urge his tardy wain,
A boisterous race, by frosty Caurus' pierc'd,
Who little pleasure know, and fear no pain,
Prolific swarm. They once relum'd the flame
Of lost mankind in polish'd slavery sank,
Drove martial horde on horde2, with dreadful sweep
Resistless rushing o'er th' enfeebled south,
And gave the vanquish'd world another form.
Not such the sons of Lapland: wisely they
Despise th' insensate barbarous trade of war;
They ask no more than simple Nature gives,
They love their mountains, and enjoy their storms.
No false desires, no pride-created wants,
Disturb the peaceful current of their time,
And through the restless ever-tortur'd maze
Of pleasure, or ambition, bid it rage.
Their rein-deer form their riches. These their tents,
Their robes, their beds, and all their homely wealth
Supply, their wholesome fare, and cheerful cups.
Obsequious at their call, the docile tribe
Yield to the sled their necks, and whirl them swift
O'er hill and dale, heap'd into one expanse
Of marbled snow, as far as eye can sweep
With a blue crust of ice unbounded glaz'd.
By dancing meteors then, that ceaseless shake
A waving blaze refracted o'er the heavens,
And vivid moons, and stars that keener play
With double lustre from the glossy waste,
Ev'n in the depth of polar night, they find
A wondrous day: enough to light the chase,
Or guide their daring steps to Finland fairs.
Wish'd Spring returus; and from the hazy south,
While dim Aurora slowly moves before,
The welcome Sun, just verging up at first,
By small degrees extends the swelling curve!
Till seen at large for gay rejoicing months,
Still round and round, his spiral course he winds,
And as he nearly dips his flaming orb,
Wheels up again, and reascends the sky.
In that glad season from the lakes and floods,
Where pure Niemi's 'fairy mountains rise,

The north-west wind.

And fring'd with roses Tenglio' rolls his stream,
They draw the copious fry. With these, at eve,
They cheerful loaded to their tents repair;
Where, all day long in useful care employ'd,
Their kind unblemish'd wives the fire prepare.
Thrice happy race! by poverty secur'd
From legal plunder and rapacious power:
In whom fell interest never yet has sown
The seeds of vice: whose spotless swains ne'er knew
Injurious deed, nor, blasted by the breath
Of faithless love, their blooming daughters woe.
Still pressing on, beyond Tornea's lake,
And Hecla flaming through a waste of snow,
And farthest Greenland, to the pole itself,
Where, failing gradual, life at length goes out,
The Muse expands her solitary flight;
And, hovering o'er the wild stupendous scene,
Beholds new seas beneath another sky 2.
Throu'd in his palace of cerulean ice,
Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court;
And through his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is for ever heard:
Here the grim tyrant meditates his wrath;
Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost;
Moulds his fierce hail, and treasures up his snows
With which he now oppresses half the globe.

Thence winding eastward to the Tartar's coast,
She sweeps the howling margin of the main;
Where undissolving, from the first of time,
Snows swell on snows amazing to the sky;
And icy mountains, high on mountains pil'd,
Seem to the shivering sailor from afar,
Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds.
Projected huge, and horrid, o'er the surge,
Alps frown on Alps, or rushing hideous down,
As if old Chaos was again return'd,
Wide-rend the deep, and shake the solid pole.
Ocean itself no longer can resist

The binding fury; but, in all its rage
Of tempest, taken by the boundless frost,
Is many a fathom to the bottom chain'd,
And bid to roar no more: a bleak expanse,
Shagg'd o'er with wavy rocks, cheerless, and void
Of every life, that from the dreary months
Flies conscious southward. Miserable they,
Who, here entangled in the gathering ice,
Take their last look of the descending San;
While, full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost,
The long long night, incumbent o'er their heads,
Falls horrible. Such was the Briton's ' fate,
As with first prow, (what have not Britons dar'd!)
He for the passage sought, attempted since
So much in vain, and seeming to be shut
By jealous Nature with eternal bars.
In these fell regions, in Arzina caught,
And to the stony deep his idle ship
Immediate seal'd, he with his hapless crew,
Fach full-exerted at his several task,
Froze into statues; to the cordage glued
The sailor, and the pilot to the helm.

Hard by these shores, where scarce his freezing Rolls the wild Oby, live the last of men; [stream And half-enliven'd by the distant Sun,

The same author observes-"I was surprized to see upon the banks of this river (the Tenglio) gardens." roses of as lively a red as any that are in our

* The other hemisphere.

Sir Hugh Willoughby, sent by queen Elizabeth to discover the north east passage.