Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the high thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or, if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
Beside which may be set, as a final example from that age of what poetry can do in the way of transfiguring plain speech, Landor’s—