When winter heaped his rattling hail
High on the window sill,
With pipe and wassail, rime and tale,
I'd never miss the nightingale
Or cuckoo on the hill.
Nay, musing by the ingle-lowe
With summer in my brain,
I'd cloth with leaves the frozen bough
And all the ice-bound brooks endow
With tinkling life again.[37]
XXII.
THE MINERS.
The afternoon is cool and calm,
Near by flashes the mighty sea,
Inland rise green, dewy hills,
Crowned with eye-bewitching trees.
Suddenly the eye is amazed and terrified,
A hideous procession sordid and grimy
Of men and boys, slaves of the coal-pit,
Is seen on the road, shaming the daylight.
All the day long they work in the darkness,
Far from the songs of the birds and the sunshine,
Now they return to their sordid villages,
Ill-smelling rows of comfortless cottages.
The rich and dainty ladies of fashion
Stand aloof from these swart coal-hewers,
Are ready to swoon as the air is poisoned
With odours of subterranean foulness.
Coarse of look, and of speech far coarser!
Laughter loud with no merriment in it!
No more soul than the beasts that perish!
These are the men despised for their toiling.