Your house is on fire! your children will roam.

List, list to their cry and bewailing!

The pitiless spider is weaving their doom!

Then lady-bird! lady-bird! fly away home,

Hark, hark to thy children’s bewailing!”


Winter. Mary Howitt has beautifully described the contrast between the rich and the poor at this season of the year:

“In rich men’s halls the fire is piled,

And furry robes keep out the weather;

In poor men’s huts the fire is low,