whatever burden may be laid upon it; and, ern eye, the landscape will lose its melancholy and acquire a beauty of its own, when Mother e her children, shall have put on the fleecy r winter's wear. The cloud spirits are slowly her white mantle. et, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoarfrost rown surface of the street; the withered grass cass-plat is still discernible; and the slated he houses do but begin to look gray instead All the snow that has yet fallen within the ence of my view, were it heaped up together, rdly equal the hillock of a grave. s gradually, by silent and stealthy influence, changes wrought. These little snow particles, e storm spirit flings by handfuls through the bury the great Earth under their accumulated permit her to behold her sister Sky again for onths. We, likewise, shall lose sight of our familiar visage, and must content ourselves king heavenward the oftener. w look we forth again, and see how much of his storm spirit has done. Slow and sure! He day, perchance the week, before him, and may own time to accomplish Nature's burial in A smooth mantle is scarcely thrown over the grass-plat, and the dry stocks of annuals still hemselves through the white surface in all parts arden. e leafless rosebushes stand shivering in a shalwdrift, looking, poor things! as disconsolate as perish with the summer; they neither what they retain of life seems but the of death. Very sad are the flower winter! as y 8. The roofs of the houses are now where the eddying wind has kept them ba corners. To discern the real intensity of must fix upon some distant object, and observe how the riotous gust fights scending snow throughout the intervening times the entire prospect is obscured, t have a distinct but transient glimpse of t like a giant's ghost; and now the dense. between, as if demons were flinging snov other in mid-air. 9. Look next into the street, where we ing parallel to the combat of those fanc the upper regions. It is a snow battle What pretty satire on war and militar be written, in the form of a child's story, the snowball fights of two rival schools, defeats and victories of each, and the fin one party, or perhaps of neither! What p worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains! ing of fortresses, built all of massive snow b feats of individual prowess, and embod martial enthusiasm! 10. And when some well contested and tory had put a period to the war, both a unite to build a lofty monument of snow tle-field, and crown it with the victor's sta upon the level common; and, unmindful victory, would ask, "How came it reared it? And what means it?" The estal of many a battle monument has p questions, when none could answer. por-tent/ous, serving to foreshow. dis-cern'i-ble (diz-zērn'-), visible. sat'ire, a species vice or folly to prow'ess, bravery column or statue. ped'es tal, the base or support of a an'nü-als, plants year. pro-vōked' (-võkt couʼri-er (kōō'-), a messenger. in-ter-věn'ing, coming between. Explain: a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude (2); eddying strains (9); embodied onsets (9). Point out a simile in paragraph 8. ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of th Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er th Seems nowhere to alight: the whited Hides hills and woods, the river and And veils the farmhouse at the garde The sled and traveler stopped, the cou Delayed, all friends shut out, the hou Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. GG, a Scotch poet very inferior to Burns in genius, was like humble birth and almost total lack of education. He wrote a great beauty, and many that are no longer read. early life tended sheep for a livelihood on the Ettrick River, he alled "the Ettrick Shepherd." rn in 1770, and died in 1835. BIRD of the wilderness, et be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! o abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay, and loud, Where art thou journeying? lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. O'er fell and fountain sheen, the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, Over the rainbow's rim, sical cherub, soar, singing, away! Then, when the gloaming comes, et will thy welcome and bed of love be! |