flakes
  Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
  With a continual flow.  The cherished fields
  Put on their winter robe of purest white;
  ’Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
  Along the mazy current; low the woods
  Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun
  Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
  Earth’s universal face, deep-hid and chill,
  Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
  The works of man.  Drooping, the labourer-ox
  Stands covered o’er with snow, and then demands
  The fruit of all his toil.  The fowls of heaven,
  Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
  The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
  Which Providence assigns them.  One alone,
  The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
  Wisely regardful of th’ embroiling sky,
  In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves

  His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
  His annual visit:  half-afraid, he first
  Against the window beats; then brisk alights
  On the warm hearth; then, hopping o’er the floor,
  Eyes all the smiling family askance,
  And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is,
  Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
  Attract his slender feet.  The foodless wilds
  Pour forth their brown inhabitants.  The hare,
  Though timorous of heart and hard beset
  By death in various forms—­dark snares, and dogs,
  And more unpitying men,—­the garden seeks,
  Urged on by fearless want.  The bleating kind
  Eye the black heaven, and next the glistening earth,
  With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
  Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.

  Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind: 
  Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens
  With food at will; lodge them below the storm,
  And watch them strict, for from the bellowing east,
  In this dire season, oft the whirlwind’s wing
  Sweeps up the burthen of whole wintry plains
  At one wide waft, and o’er the hapless flocks,
  Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,
  The billowy tempest whelms, till, upward urged,
  The valley to a shining mountain swells,
  Tipped with a wreath high-curling in the sky.

  As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce
  All Winter drives along the darkened air,
  In his own loose-revolving fields the swain
  Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend,
  Of unknown, joyless brow, and other scenes,
  Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
  Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid
  Beneath the formless wild, but wanders on
  From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
  Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
  Stung with the thoughts of home.  The thoughts of home
  Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
  In many a vain attempt.  How sinks his soul,
  What black despair, what horror fills his heart,
  When, for the dusky spot which fancy feigned