NOVEMBER. 



With verdure not unprofitable, grazed 

 By flocks, fast feeding 1 , and selecting each 

 His favourite herb ; while all the leafless groves 

 That skirt the horizon wore a sable hue, 

 Scarce noticed in the kindred dusk of eve. 

 To-morrow brings a change, a total change, 

 Which even now, though silently performed, 

 And slowly, and by most unfelt, the face 

 Of universal nature undergoes. 

 Fast falls the fleecy shower ; the downy flakes 

 Descending, and with never-ceasing lapse 

 Softly alighting upon all below, 

 Assimilate all objects. Earth receives 

 Gladly the thickening mantle, and the green 

 And tender blade, that feared the chilling blast, 

 Escapes unhurt beneath so warm a veil. 



COWPER. 



The return of winter is pleasurable even in its 

 severity. The first snow that comes dancing down 

 the first frost that rimes the hedges, variegates 

 the windows, or shoots its fine long crystals across 

 the smallest puddle or the widest sheet of water, 

 bring with them the remembrance of our boyish 

 pleasures, our slidings and skatings our snow- 

 ballings and snow-rolling our snow-man making 

 the wonders of hoar-frosts of nightly snow-drifts 

 in hollow lanes of caves and houses, scooped in 

 the wintry heaps with much labour and delight ; 

 and of scampering over hedge and ditch on the 

 frozen snow, that " crunched beneath the tread," but 

 broke not. 



The dark, wet, and wintry days, and the long 

 dismal nights of this season, are, however, favoura- 



