Their spears above the ice-enfettered brooks;
But the pent river wailed, through prison walls,
For freedom and the time to rend its chains.
At last it came: five days a drenching rain
Flooded the country; snow-drifts fell away;
The brooks grew rivers, and the river here—
A ravenous, angry torrent—tore up banks,
And overflowed the meadows, league on league.
Great cakes of ice, four-square, with mounds of hay,
Fence-rails, and scattered drift-wood, and huge beams