“The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
  Screens them, and seem half petrified with sleep
  In unrecumbent sadness.  There they wait
  Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,
  Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
  And patient of the slow-paced swain’s delay. 
  He, from the stack, carves out the accustomed load,
  Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft,
  The broad keen knife into the solid mass: 
  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 neighboring pale,
  Where, diligent to cast 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.”

The American poets have excelled their English brethren in painting the outward aspects of Winter.  Here is Mr. Emerson’s description of a snow storm: 

  “Announced by all the trumpets of the sky
  Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
  Seems nowhere to alight:  the whited air
  Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
  And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. 
  The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s