The clouds, low hung, seemed resting on the hills
Fraught with unusual weight, and cast around
Deep shades of blackness o’er each swelling peak,
By leafless woodlands clad; along the vales
The farmsteads glimmered, and the fields around—
Some grey with stubble, some with scanty grass
Pinched yellow by the cold, and some dark brown,
Where recent ploughshares had turned up the soil,—
A varied scene presented to the eye,
But sombre all, and sad. Not that the earth