XI.
Sunset and snow! Lo, eve reveals
Her starr'd map to the moon,
And o'er hush'd earth a radiance steals
More bland than that of noon:
The fur-robed genii of the Pole
Dance o'er our mountains white,
Chain up the billows as they roll,
And pearl the caves with light.
XII.
The moon above the eastern fells
Holds on a silent way;
The mill-wheel, sparr'd with icicles,
Reflects her silver ray;
The ivy-tod, beneath its load,
Bends down with frosty curl;
And all around seems sown the ground
With diamond and with pearl.
XIII.
The groves are black, the hills are white,
And, glittering in the sheen,
The lake expands—a sheet of light—
Its willowy banks between;
From the dark sedge that skirts its edge,
The startled wild-duck springs,
While, echoing far up copse and scaur,
The fowler's musket rings.
XIV.
From cove to cove how sweet to rove
Around that fairy scene,
Companion'd, as along we move,
By things and thoughts serene;—
Voiceless—except where, cranking, rings
The skater's curve along,
The demon of the ice, who sings
His deep hoarse undersong.
XV.
In days of old, when spirits held
The air, and the earth below,
When o'er the green were, tripping, seen
The fays—what wert thou, Snow?
Leave eastern Greece its fabled fleece,
For Northland has its own—
The witches of Norway pluck their geese,
And thou art their plumes of down.
XVI.
The snow! the snow! It brings to mind
A thousand happy things,
And but one sad one—'tis to find
Too sure that Time hath wings!
Oh, ever sweet is sight or sound
That tells of long ago;
And I gaze around, with thoughts profound,
Upon the falling snow!
LOVE IN THE WILDERNESS.
My father intended me for the church; but as it did not seem likely that any body intended a church for me, I considered, from my earliest youth, that all the education he gave me was thrown away. My tutors were probably of the same opinion, and did not bestow much care on a person who had no chance of being a bishop; and finally, the head of St John's, in the most open and independent manner imaginable, wrote a letter to my anxious parent, putting an end to any hopes he might have entertained of my being senior wrangler, or even the wooden spoon, by informing him that he considered I was qualified—if I devoted my energies entirely to the subject—to plant cabbages; but with regard to Euclid, it was quite out of the question. Whether I might have arrived at any eminence in the praiseworthy pursuit alluded to by the learned Head, I do not know, as horticulture never was my taste; but his observations on the subject of Euclid were undeniably correct. I never got up to the asses' bridge, and certainly could not have passed it if I had; so, in a very disconsolate frame of mind, I took leave of the university after two terms' residence, and returned to Rayleigh Court—an old dilapidated manor-house, which had been in possession of our family even since it began to fall into disrepair; which, judging from the crooked walls and tottering chimneys, must have been some time in the reign of the Plantagenets. I was an only son, and my father spoiled me—not, as only sons are usually spoiled, by too much indulgence, but by the most persevering and incessant system of bullying that ever made a poor mortal miserable. He first cowed and terrified me into nervousness, and called me a coward; then he thrashed and threatened me into stupidity, and called me a fool: so that at eighteen there are few young persons of these degenerate days who have so humble and true an opinion of themselves, as I had had dinned into me from my earliest years.