50 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



and gives it agreeable associations. In summer it sug- 

 gests cookeiy 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 trora his roof, 

 To feci the frosty air ; . . . . 

 And, while he crouches still beside the hearth, 

 Nor musters courage to unbar the- door, 

 It lias 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 siglit 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." 



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 Moretwni of Virgil (or, 

 if not his, better than most of his) is a pretty picture 

 of a jjeasant kindling his winter-morning fire. He rises 

 before dawn, 



Sollicitaque manu tenebras explorat inertes 

 Vestisratque focum Icesus quem denique sensit. 

 Parvulus cxusto remanebat stipite fumus, 

 Et cinis obductte celabat lumina pnin£E. 

 Admovet his pronam sul^missa fronte lucernara, 

 Et producit acu stupas humore carentes, 

 Excitat et crebris langnentem flatibus ignem ; 

 Tandem concepto tenebras fnlgore 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. 



