The Task and Other Poems [36]
The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight, the legs without the man. The verdure of the plain lies buried deep Beneath the dazzling deluge, and the bents And coarser grass upspearing o'er the rest, Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad, And fledged with icy feathers, nod superb. The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence Screens them, and seem, half petrified, to 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 His 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 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)