WINTER.
Winter is a noisy, blustering, bustling season, though in general he keeps himself cool. Even as early as November he seems already impatient to begin his sway. If you leave a door ajar, he slams it wide open and comes puffing in, and blows the newspaper into the fire, oversets the clothes-horse, and cuts sundry other capers of the sort. He takes advantage of every still night to steal into the garden and pinch off the heads of the flowers. He mounts every black cloud, and from it sends down a flurry of sleet, hail or snow. In December he clutches the reins of government, and in a few days,
——congeals every brook,
That murmured so lately with glee,
And places a snowy peruke
On the head of each baldpated tree;
* * * * *
And a black wreck of clouds is seen to fly
In broken shatters through the frighted sky.
SPRING.