Written in GERMANY, On one of the coldest days of the Century. I must apprise the Reader that the stoves in North Germany generally have the impression of a galloping Horse upon them, this being part of the Brunswick Arms. A fig for your languages, German and Norse! Let me have the song of the Kettle; And the tongs and the poker, instead of that Horse That gallops away with such fury and force On this dreary dull plate of black metal. Our earth is no doubt made of excellent stuff; But her pulses beat slower and slower : The weather in Forty was cutting and rough, And then, as Heaven knows, the Glass stood low enough; And now it is four degrees lower. Here's a Fly, a disconsolate creature, perhaps A child of the field, or the grove; And, sorrow for him! this dull treacherous heat Alas! how he fumbles about the domains He cannot find out in what track he must crawl, And now on the brink of the iron. Stock-still there he stands like a traveller bemaz'd; His feelers methinks I can see him put forth To the East and the West, and the South and the North; But he finds neither Guide-post nor Guide. See! his spindles sink under him, foot, leg and thigh s His eyesight and hearing are lost; Between life and death his blood freezes and thaws; And his two pretty pinions of blue dusky gauze No Brother, no Friend has he near him-while I As if green summer grass were the floor of my room, Yet, God is my witness, thou small helpless Thing! Till summer comes up from the South, and with crowds Of thy brethren a march thou should'st sound through the clouds, And back to the forests again, The CHILDLESS FATHER. Up, Timothy, up with your Staff and away! "Not a soul in the village this morning will stay; 3 "The Hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds, "And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds." -Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet and green, The bason of box-wood,* just six months before, *In several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a bason full of Sprigs of Box-wood is placed at A Coffin through Timothy's threshold had pass'd; Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray, Perhaps to himself at that moment he said, the door of the house from which the Coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordinarily takes a Sprig of this Box-wood, and throws it into the grave of the deceased. |