32 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



&quot; But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed 

 By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt, 

 And groves, if inharmonious, yet secure 

 From clamour, and whose very silence charms, 

 To be preferred to smoke ? . . . 

 They would be, were not madness in the head 

 And folly in the heart ; were England now 

 What England was, plain, hospitable, kind, 

 And undebauched.&quot; 



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 : 



&quot; Winter, ruler of the inverted year ; &quot; 



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 &quot; the inverted year &quot; 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 : 



&quot; 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, 

 I love thee all unlovely 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, 



