Indeed, the time is determined by the poetry, for “yon hard crescent” shows that the moon was up when he was writing.
Ice making “daggers at the sharpen’d eaves” is a common sight. Such icicles may be sometimes seen a yard long, pendent from any eave or ledge.
“Brakes” means bushes; “grides” may mean “grates;” and “iron horns” must be the dry hard forked boughs; but how distinguished from the “leafless ribs” of the wood, unless as descriptive of the forms of different trees in the wood, is difficult to understand.
“The drifts that pass
To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast”
must allude to drifts of snow, which falling into water, immediately blacken before they dissolve.
“Bring in great logs and let them lie.”
This birthday shall no more be kept as a day of mourning, but shall be joyously observed,
“with festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him whate’er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.”[76]
CVIII.