On its sorrow and crime,
Blotting them, folding them
Under its rime.
Beautiful as an original image is the thought of the snow descending hushed and holy, ‘like the great pity of God in his love,’ but it is a sentimental obtrusion, out of character with the snow-picture as such. We find Campbell frequently creating the most engaging Nature pictures, and here or there in a poem recalling the eye from the pure visual delights to let the moral imagination reflect on some suggestion, some similitude, for ‘the inward soul.’ What a pretty pastel, for instance, he paints with spare use of mere tints, in the first two stanzas of In the Study:—
Out over my study,
All ashen and ruddy
Sinks the December sun,
And high up over
The chimney’s soot cover
The winter night has begun.