36 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



predecessors 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 infi- 

 nite. He could not help loving a handy Latinism (espe- 

 cially 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, 

 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, 

 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, masculine, and strong in the simplicity 

 of a mind wholly occupied with its theme. To me Cow- 



