Beware the January month, beware Those hurtful days, that keenly-piercing air Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast O'er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast. From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the north, And moves it with his breath: the ocean floods Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods. Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells, And strews with thick-branch'd pines the mountain dells: He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around; The depth of forest rolls the roar of sound. The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold, And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold; Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin, But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within. Not his rough hide can then the ox avail; The long-hair'd goat, defenceless, feels the gale: Yet vain the north wind's rushing strength to wound The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around. He bows the old man crook'd beneath the storm, But spares the soft-skinn'd virgin's tender form. Screened by her mother's roof on wintry nights, And strange to golden Venus' mystic rites, The suppling waters of the bath she swims, With shiny ointment sleeks her dainty limbs; Within her chamber laid on downy bed, While winter howls in tempest o'er her head. Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet, Starved 'midst bleak rocks, his desolate retreat; For now no more the sun, with gleaming ray, Through seas transparent lights him to his prey. And now the hornéd and unhornéd kind, Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famished, grind Their sounding jaws, and, chilled and quaking, fly Where oaks the mountain dells embranch on high: They seek to conch in thickets of the glen, Or lurk, deep sheltered, in some rocky den. Like aged men, who, propp'd on crutches, tread Tottering, with broken strength and stooping head, So move the beasts of earth, and, creeping low, Shun the white flakes and dread the drifting snow. --Trans. by ELTON.