These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o’er all the bitterness of death,
Mix’d with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man—
His wife—his children—and his friends unseen.
In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire, fair, blazing, and the vestment warm.
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire