WINTER.

sketches; and yet the Winter song of Shakspeare's, from "As you like it," furnishes us with a picture in every line, and leaves us cause for regret that the few poems, we have here collected together, comprise the whole that the poet of all time has written relative to our subject. Jonson, as is well known, wrote a masque entitled "Christmas," but the verses it contains are the veriest doggrel, and the wit it is seasoned with is of the smallest quality; we therefore refrain from printing an extract from it, but give instead, a quotation from one of his poems, published under the title of "The Forest."

The stanzas by Spenser are from one of the imperfect books of the "Fairy Queen." It was evidently this description of Winter which Southey had in mind when he wrote the Sonnet quoted in Division VI. of the present work.

WINTER.

THOMAS SACKVILLE.

THE wrathful winter, 'proaching on a-pace
With blust'ring blast, had all ybared the treen;
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierced the tender green;
The mantle rent wherein enwrapped been
The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapers torn, and every tree down blown;
The soil, that erst so seemly used to seem,

Was all despoiled of her beauties' hue,

And stole fresh flowers, (wherewith the Summer's queen
Had clad the earth) now Boreas' blast down blew;
And small fowls flocking, in their songs did rue
The Winter's wrath, wherewith each thing, defaced,

In woeful wise bewail'd the Summer past:
Hawthorn had lost his motley livery,

The naked twigs were shivering all for cold,

And, dropping down the tears abundantly,

Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told
The cruel season, bidding me withhold

Myself within.

WHEN icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-whoo;

Tu-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel* the pot.

• Cool.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw;

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;

Tu-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,

While

W. SHAKSPEARE.

SOME say that ever 'gainst that season comes,
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed, and so gracious is the time.

WINTER.

EDMUND SPENSER.

NEXT came the chill December:

Yet he, through merry feasting which he made And great bonfires, did not the cold remember;

His Saviour's birth his mind so much did glad:
Upon a shaggy bearded goat he rode,

The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years,
They say, was nourished by th' Iœan maid;
And in his hand a broad deep bowl he bears,
Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peers.
Lastly, came Winter clothed all in frieze,

Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill;
Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freeze,
And the dull drops, that from his purpled bill,
As from a limbeck, did adown distil:

In his right hand a tipped staff he held,

With which his feeble steps he stayèd still; For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld,

That scarce his loosèd limbs he able was to wield.

THOU, in the winter, hunt'st the flying hare,
More for thy exercise, than fare;

While all that follow, their glad ears apply

To the full greatness of the cry;