Winter comes with screech and wail,
Piercing blast and thundering gale;
Far from frozen climes he brings
Sleet and snow, and blanching things.
He has trod the North Pole round,
Long in icy fetters bound;
Swept by Greenland’s frigid shore,
Where the western billows roar--
Roamed o’er Lapland’s ice-bound plains,
Where chaotic darkness reigns;
Rested on that land of woe
Where the Russian captives go;
Land where men of royal race,
Exiled by some tyrant base,
Pined in suffering, died in grief,
No fond hand to bring relief--
No bright eyes to shed one tear
O’er their cold and lonely bier;
Dying far from wife and child
In Siberia’s stormy wild.
Winter comes--his footsteps tread
O’er the ocean’s rugged bed;
As a ruthless conqueror he
Sends his storms from sea to sea;
Pity ne’er hath seized his breast,
Sighs do ne’er disturb his rest--
Shrieks that boom along the wave,
And mark the seaman’s wat’ry grave,
Fail to touch his icy soul,
Fail to stop the billow’s roll.
When enthroned as ocean’s king,
Spirits of his triumphs sing,
Drinking to his sovereign power
In the fearful midnight hour,
From those remnants of the dead
That round ocean’s depths are spread.
Winter comes, with giant stride
O’er the hills and forests wide;
From his aged brow he sheds
Hoary locks around their heads--
Mantles in his polar garb
Tree and flower and tender herb.
Not a leaf appears to show
Where the summer cowslips grow;
Not a bud or blossom fair
Scents with sweets the chilly air;
Not a bluebell decks the heath,
All are hid beneath the wreath
Spread by his unfriendly hand
O’er the dark dismantled land.
Gardens once so bright and gay,
’Neath the summer’s solar ray,
Once so rich in lovely gems,
Hanging on their pendent stems,
Seem as some lone desert wild
Where fair beauty never smiled--
Where the light of summer’s sun
Never touched or lit upon;
Nature lies all lone and dead,
’Neath old Winter’s frosty tread.
Winter comes, and some rejoice,
Glad to hear his sullen voice
Booming o’er the crested waves,
Sounding through old grots and caves--
Sighing ’mid the forest trees,
Not in songs of summer’s breeze,
But like mournings for the dead,
That as fairy flowers have fled;
Mounting o’er the mountain’s brow,
Where the oak-tree’s trembling bough,
Rushing through the wooded glen,
Swooping o’er the frightsome fen.
This is joy to hearts that know
Nothing of the drifting snow,
But beside the glowing hearth
Spend the hours in joy and mirth,
Laughing at the well-told tale,
While without the rising gale
Sweeps in furious mood along,
Heedless of their boisterous song.
Winter comes--and sorrow brings
On his dark foreboding wings,
To the poor lone helpless child
On whom fortune never smiled,
To the wretched cots and cells
Where want’s abject sufferer dwells.
Round them he does cast his reins,
O’er them brings his woes and pains.
O! ye lordlings of the earth,
Freed from pinching want by birth,
Let your bosoms heave one sigh
For the poor whose piercing cry
Calls for sympathy from all,
Loud as human woes can call,
Plead with you on every mind
To be moved with mercy kind;
Supplicates for help to save
Suffering equals from the grave.
Hear, O hear their melting cries
Rising upward to the skies;
Hear, and let the good which heaven
Kindly to your hands hath given,
Aid in promptly helping those
Steept in poverty and woes;
Then when earthly days are fled,
And the joys (now dark and dead)
Cease for ever from your eyes,
May you live beyond the skies;
May you hear your Saviour say,
Come, my servants, come away;
Enter in and seize your crown,
Be partakers of my throne;
For on earth you loved your lord;
Hearken’d to his every word--
Heard his suffering children cry,
Wiped the tear-drops from their eye--
Inasmuch as thus your love,
Round their troubled souls did move,
So to me that love was given
Enter in with me to heaven.
Coleraine, December 1840. S. A.