He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows,
And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home."
Cowper is superior to Thomson as a painter of Winter, although it is doubtful whether he was by nature the better poet. Here is one of his pictures:
"The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified with sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He, from the stack, carves out the accustomed load,