He fevers it away: no needless care,
Left ftorms fhould overfet the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned
The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his folitary task.

frifk

Shaggy, and lean, and fhrewd, with pointed ears
And tail cropped fhort, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he flow; and now, with many a
Wide-fcampering, fnatches up the drifted fnow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his fnout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.
Heedlefs of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves right toward the mark; nor ftops for aught,
But now and then with preffure of his thumb
To adjuft the fragrant charge of a short tube,
That fumes beneath his nofe: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
Now from the rooft, or from the neighbouring pale,
Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they goffiped fide by fide,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call

The feathered tribes domeftic. Half on wing
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Confcious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves
To feize the fair occafion. Well they eye
The fcattered grain, and thievishly refolved
To efcape the impending famine, often scared
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.

Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or fhed impervious to the blaft. Refigned
To fad neceffity, the cock foregoes
His wonted ftrut; and wading at their head
With well-confidered steps, seems to resent
His altered gait and stateliness retrenched.
How find the myriads, that in fummer cheer
The hills and vallies with their ceaseless songs,
Due fuftenance, or where subsist they now?
Earth yields them nought; the imprisoned worm
is fafe

Beneath the frozen clod; all feeds of herbs
Lie covered clofe; and berry-bearing thorns,
That feed the thrush, (whatever fome fuppofe)
Afford the fmaller minstrels no supply.

The long protracted rigour of the year

Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes
Ten thoufand feek an unmolested end,

As inftinct prompts; self-buried ere they die.
The

very rooks and daws forfake the fields,
Where neither grub, nor root, nor earth-nut, now
Repays their labour more; and perched aloft
By the way-fide, or stalking in the path,
Lean penfioners upon the traveller's track,
Pick up their naufeous dole, though sweet to them,
Of voided pulfe or half-digefted grain.

The ftreams are loft amid the fplendid blank,
O'erwhelming all diftinction. On the flood,
Indurated and fixt, the fnowy weight
Lies undiffolved; while filently beneath,
And unperceived, the current steals away.
Not fo where, fcornful of a check, it leaps
The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel,
And wantons in the pebbly gulph below:
No froft can bind it there; its utmost force
Can but arreft the light and fmoky mift,
That in its fall the liquid fheet throws wide.
And fee where it has hung the embroidered banks
With forms fo various, that no powers of art,

The pencil or the pen, may trace the scene!
Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high
(Fantastic mifarrangement!) on the roof
Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees
And fhrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops,
That trickle down the branches, faft congealed,
Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,

And prop the pile they but adorned before.

Here grotto within grotto safe defies

The fun-beam; there, emboffed and fretted wild,
The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes
Capricious, in which fancy feeks in vain
The likeness of some object seen before.
Thus nature works as if to mock at art,
And in defiance of her rival powers;
By these fortuitous and random ftrokes
Performing fuch inimitable feats,

As the with all her rules can never reach.
Lefs worthy of applaufe, though more admired,
Because a novelty, the work of man,

Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Rufs!
Thy moft magnificent and mighty freak,

The wonder of the North. No foreft fell

When thou wouldst build; no quarry fent its stores

To enrich thy walls: but thou didft hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glaffy wave.
In fuch a palace Ariftæus found

Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
Of his loft bees to her maternal ear:

In fuch a palace poetry might place
The armory of winter; where his troops,

The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy fleet,
Skin-piercing volley, bloffom-bruifing hail,

And fnow, that often blinds the traveller's course,
And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.
Silently as a dream the fabric rose;

No found of hammer or of faw was there:
Ice upon ice, the well-adjufted parts

Were foon conjoined, nor other cement asked
Than water interfused to make them one.
Lamps gracefully difpofed, and of all hues,
Illumined every fide: a watery light

Gleamed through the clear tranfparency, that seemed
Another moon new rifen, or meteor fallen
From heaven to earth, of lambent flame ferene.
So ftood the brittle prodigy; though smooth
And flippery the materials, yet froft-bound
Firm as a rock. Nor wanted aught within,