A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 39 



Now look down from your hill-side across the valley. The 

 trees are leafless, but this is the season to study their ana 

 tomy, and did you ever notice before how much colour there 

 is in the twigs of many of them ? And the smoke from those 

 chimneys is so blue it seems like a feeder of the sky into 

 which it flows. Winter refines it, and gives it agreeable 

 associations. In summer it suggests cookery or the drudgery 

 of steam-engines, but now your fancy (if it can forget for a 

 moment the dreary usurpation of stoves) traces it down to 

 the fireside and the brightened faces of children. Thoreau 

 is the only poet who has fitly sung it. The wood-cutter rises 



before day. and 







First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad 



His early scout, his emissary, smoke, 



The earliest, latest pilgrim from his roof, 



To feel the frosty air ; . 



And, while he crouches still beside the hearth, 



Nor musters courage to unbar the door, 



It has gone down the glen -with the light wind 



And o er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath, 



Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill, 



And warmed the pinions of the early bird ; 



And now, perchance, high in the crispy air, 



Has caught_ sight of the day o er the earth s edge, 



And grists its master s eye at his low door 



As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky. 



Here is very bad verse and very good imagination. He 

 had been reading Wordsworth, or he would not have made 

 tree-tops an iambus. In the Moretum of Virgil (or, if not his, 

 better than most of his) is a pretty picture of a peasant 

 kindling his winter-morning fire. He rises before dawn, 



Sollicitaque manu tenebras explorat inertes 

 Vestigatque focum laesus quern denique sensit 

 Parvulus exusto remanebat stipite fumus, 

 Et cinis obductse celabat lumina prunae. 

 Admovet his pronam submissa fronte lucernam, 

 Et producit acu stupas humore carentes, 

 Excitat et crebris languentem flatibus ignem ; 

 Tandem concepto tenebrse fulgore recedunt, 

 Opposilaque manu lumen defendit ab aura. 



With cautious hand he gropes the sluggish dark, 

 Tracking the hearth which, scorched, he feels erelong. 

 In burnt-out logs a slender smoke remained, 

 And raked-up ashes hid the cinders eyes ; 

 Stooping, to these the lamp outstretched he nears, 

 And, with a needle loosening the dry wick, 

 With frequent breath excites the languid flame. 

 Before the gathering glow the shades recede, 

 And his bent hand the new-caught light defends. 



