A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 45 



wield a delicate graver, and in fancy leaves Piranesi far 

 behind. He covers your window-pane with Alpine etchings, 

 as if m memory of that sanctuary where he finds shelter 

 even in midsummer. 



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

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

 anatomy, 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 



&quot;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 greets its master s eye at his low door 

 As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky.&quot; 



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, 



&quot; Sollicitaque manu tenebras explorat inertes 

 Vestigatque focum Isesus quern denique sensit. 

 Parvulus exusto remanebat stipite fumus, 

 Et cinis obductse celabat lumina prunse. 

 Admovet his pronam submissa fronte lucernam, 



