Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands, With such undeviating and even force He severs it away: no needless care, Lest storms should overset the leaning pile Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy and lean and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow, and now with many a frisk, Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;Then shakes his powdered coat and barks for joy.
Heedless of all his pranks the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught, But now and then, with pressure of his thumb, To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube, That fumes beneath his nose; the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
Now from the roost, or from the neighbouring pale, Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feathered tribes domestic; half on wing, And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, Conscious, and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves To seize the fair occasion; well they eye The scattered grain, and, thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared As oft return, a pert, voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned To sad necessity the cock foregoes His wonted strut, and, wading at their head With well-considered steps, seems to resent His altered gait, and stateliness retrenched.
How find the myriads, that in summer cheer The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs, Due sustenance, or where subsist they now?
Earth yields them naught: the imprisoned worm is safe Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs Lie covered close, and berry-bearing thorns That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose), Afford the smaller minstrel no supply.
The long-protracted rigour of the year Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes Ten thousand seek an unmolested end, As instinct prompts, self-buried ere they die.
The very rooks and daws forsake the fields, Where neither grub nor root nor earth-nut now Repays their labour more; and perched aloft By the way-side, or stalking in the path, Lean pensioners upon the traveller's track, Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them, Of voided pulse, or half-digested grain.
The streams are lost amid the splendid blank, O'erwhelming all distinction. On the flood Indurated and fixed the snowy weight Lies undissolved, while silently beneath And unperceived the current steals away;Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel, And wantons in the pebbly gulf below.
No frost can bind it there. Its utmost force Can but arrest the light and smoky mist That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.
And see where it has hung the embroidered banks With forms so various, that no powers of art, The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene!
Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high (Fantastic misarrangement) on the roof Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops That trickle down the branches, fast congealed, Shoot into pillars of pellucid length And prop the pile they but adorned before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies The sunbeam. There imbossed and fretted wild, The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain The likeness of some object seen before.
Thus nature works as if to mock at art, And in defiance of her rival powers;By these fortuitous and random strokes Performing such inimitable feats, As she with all her rules can never reach.
Less worthy of applause though more admired, Because a novelty, the work of man, Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ, Thy most magnificent and mighty freak, The wonder of the North. No forest fell When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods, And make thy marble of the glassy wave.
In such a palace Aristaeus found Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale Of his lost bees to her maternal ear.
In such a palace poetry might place The armoury of winter, where his troops, The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet, Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail, And snow that often blinds the traveller's course, And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.
Silently as a dream the fabric rose.
No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked Than water interfused to make them one.
Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, Illumined every side. A watery light Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed Another moon new-risen, or meteor fallen From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene.
So stood the brittle prodigy, though smooth And slippery the materials, yet frost-bound Firm as a rock. Nor wanted aught within That royal residence might well befit, For grandeur or for use. Long wavy wreaths Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth, Blushed on the panels. Mirror needed none Where all was vitreous, but in order due Convivial table and commodious seat (What seemed at least commodious seat) were there, Sofa and couch and high-built throne august.
The same lubricity was found in all, And all was moist to the warm touch; a scene Of evanescent glory, once a stream, And soon to slide into a stream again.
