28 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



The conclusion shows, however, that he was thinking 

 mainly of fireside delights, not of the blusterous companion 

 ship of nature. This appears even more clearly in the Fourth 

 Book : 



O Winter, ruler of the inverted year ; 



but I cannot help interrupting him to say how pleasant it 

 always is to track poets through the gardens of their pre 

 decessors and find out their likings by a flower snapped off 

 here and there to garnish their own nosegays. Cowper had 

 been reading Thomson, and the inverted year pleased his 

 fancy with its suggestion of that starry wheel of the zodiac 

 moving round through its spaces infinite. He could not help 

 loving a handy Latinism (especially with elision beauty 

 added), any more than Gray, any more than Wordsworth 

 on the sly. But the member for Olney has the floor : 



Winter, ruler of the inverted year, 



Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled, 

 Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks 

 Fringed with a beard made white with other snows 

 Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds, 

 A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 

 A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, 

 But urged by storms along its slippery way, 



1 love thee all ijilovely as thou seem st, 



And dreaded as thou art ! Thou hold st the sun 

 A prisoner in the yet undawning east, 

 Shortening his journey between morn and noon, 

 And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, 

 Down to the rosy west, but kindly still 

 Compensating his loss with added hours 

 Of social converse and instructive ease, 

 And gathering at short notice, in one group, 

 The family dispersed, and fixing thought, 

 Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. 

 I crown thee king of intimate delights, 

 Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness, 

 And all the comforts that the lowly roof 

 Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours 

 Of long uninterrupted evening know. 



I call this a good human bit of writing, imaginative, too 

 not so flushed, not so .... highfaluting (let me dare the 

 odious word !) as the modern style since poets have got hold 

 of a theory that imagination is common-sense turned inside 

 out, and not common-sense sublimed but wholesome, mas 

 culine, and strong in the simplicity of a mind wholly occu 

 pied with its theme. To me Cowper is still the best of our 

 descriptive poets for every-day wear. And what unobtrusive 

 skill he has ! How he heightens, for example, your sense of 



