brow,
  Bright stars of ice and azure worlds of snow,
  Where needle peaks of granite shooting bare
  Tremble in ever-varying tints of air,
  Great joy by horror tam’d dilates his heart, 560
  And the near heav’ns their own delights impart. 
 —­When the Sun bids the gorgeous scene farewell,
  Alps overlooking Alps their state upswell;
  Huge Pikes of Darkness nam’d, of [Y] Fear and Storms
  Lift, all serene, their still, illumin’d forms, 565
  In sea-like reach of prospect round him spread,
  Ting’d like an angel’s smile all rosy red.

  When downward to his winter hut he goes,
  Dear and more dear the lessening circle grows,
  That hut which from the hills his eyes employs 570
  So oft, the central point of all his joys. 
  And as a swift by tender cares oppress’d
  Peeps often ere she dart into her nest,
  So to th’ untrodden floor, where round him looks
  His father helpless as the babe he rocks, 575
  Oft he descends to nurse the brother pair,
  Till storm and driving ice blockade him there;
  There hears, protected by the woods behind,
  Secure, the chiding of the baffled wind,
  Hears Winter, calling all his Terrors round, 580
  Rush down the living rocks with whirlwind sound.

  Thro’ Nature’s vale his homely pleasures glide
  Unstain’d by envy, discontent, and pride,
  The bound of all his vanity to deck
  With one bright bell a favourite heifer’s neck; 585
  Content upon some simple annual feast,
  Remember’d half the year, and hop’d the rest,
  If dairy produce, from his inner hoard,
  Of thrice ten summers consecrate the board. 
 —­Alas! in every clime a flying ray 590
  Is all we have to chear our wintry way,
  Condemn’d, in mists and tempests ever rife,
  To pant slow up the endless Alp of life. 
  “Here,” cried a swain, whose venerable head
  Bloom’d with the snow-drops of Man’s narrow bed, 595
  Last night, while by his dying fire, as clos’d
  The day, in luxury my limbs repos’d,
  “Here Penury oft from misery’s mount will guide
  Ev’n to the summer door his icy tide,
  And here the avalanche of Death destroy 600
  The little cottage of domestic Joy. 
  But, ah! th’ unwilling mind may more than trace
  The general sorrows of the human race: 
  The churlish gales, that unremitting blow
  Cold from necessity’s continual snow, 605
  To us the gentle groups of bliss deny
  That on the noon-day bank of leisure lie. 
  Yet more; the tyrant Genius, still at strife
  With all the tender Charities of life,
  When close and closer they begin to strain, 610
  No fond hand left to staunch th’ unclosing vein,