Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky;

On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves

The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves;

The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave,

Drugged with the opiate that November gave,

Beats with faint wing against the snowy pane,

Or crawls tenacious o’er its lucid plain;

From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls

In languid curves the gliding serpent crawls;

The bog’s green harper, thawing from his sleep