The In its slant splendor, seemed to tell World Of Pisa's leaning miracle. Beautiful
All day the gusty north wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. No church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voicéd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The music of whose liquid lip Had been to us companionship, And in our lonely life, had grown To have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,— The oaken log, green, huge and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty fore-stick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old rude-fashioned room Burst flower-like into rosy bloom; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became, And through the bare-boughed lilac tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed, The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree, When fire outdoors burns merrily, There the witches are making tea."
Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row,
And close at hand the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.
Highland Cattle
Down the wintry mountain
Like a cloud they come,
Not like a cloud in its silent shroud
When the sky is leaden and the earth all dumb,
But tramp, tramp, tramp, With a roar and a shock,
And stamp, stamp, stamp,
Down the hard granite rock,
With the snow-flakes falling fair Like an army in the air
Of white-winged angels leaving
Their heavenly homes, half grieving,
And half glad to drop down kindly upon earth so bare:
With a snort and a bellow
Tossing manes dun and yellow,
Red and roan, black and gray,
In their fierce merry play,
Though the sky is all leaden and the earth all dumb
Down the noisy cattle come!
Throned on the mountain
Winter sits at ease:
Hidden under mist are those peaks of amethyst That rose like hills of heaven above the amber
While crash, crash, crash,
Through the frozen heather brown,
And dash, dash, dash,
Where the ptarmigan drops down
And the curlew stops her cry
And the deer sinks, like to die
The And the waterfall's loud noise World Is the only living voiceBeautiful
With a plunge and a roar
Like mad waves upon the shore, Or the wind through the pass Howling o'er the reedy grass-
In a wild battalion pouring from the heights unto the plain,
Down the cattle come again!
Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve. Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side, They sat them down;
About them frisking played
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den.
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gamboled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly,
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