50 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



and gives it agreeable associations. In summer it sug- 

 gests 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 greets its master's eye at his low door 

 As some refulgent cloud iu 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 risea 

 before dawn, 



Sollicitaque manu tenebras explorat inertes 

 Vestigatque focum laesus quem deniqne sensit. 

 Parvulus exusto remnnebat 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, 

 Oppositaque 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. 



