TO THE CLOUDS O painted clouds! sweet beauties of the sky, How have I view’d your motion and your rest When like fleet hunters ye have left mine eye, In your thin gauze of woolly-fleecing drest; Or in your threaten’d thunder’s grave black vest, Like black deep waters slowly moving by, Awfully striking the spectator’s breast With your Creator’s dread sublimity, As admiration mutely views your storms. And I do love to see you idly lie, Painted by heav’n as various as your forms, Pausing upon the eastern mountain high, As morn awakes with spring’s wood-harmony; And sweeter still, when in your slumbers sooth You hang the western arch o’er day’s proud eye: Still as the even-pool, uncurv’d and smooth, My gazing soul has look’d most placidly; And higher still devoutly wish’d to strain, To wipe your shrouds and sky’s blue blinders by, With all the warmness of a moon-struck brain,-- To catch a glimpse of Him who bids you reign, And view the dwelling of all majesty. THE WOODMAN DEDICATED TO THE REV. J. KNOWLES HOLLAND. The beating snow-clad bell, with sounding dead, Hath clanked four--the woodman’s wak’d again; And, as he leaves his comfortable bed, Dithers to view the rimy feather’d pane, And shrugs, and wishes--but ’tis all in vain: The bed’s warm comforts he most now forego; His family that oft till eight hath lain, Without his labour’s wage could not do so. And glad to make them blest he shuffles through the snow. The early winter’s morn is dark as pitch, The wary wife from tinder brought at night With flint and steel, and may a sturdy twitch, Sits up in bed to strike her man a light; And as the candle shows the rapturous sight, Aside his wife his rosy sleeping boy, He smacks his lips with exquisite delight, With all a father’s feelings, father’s joy, Then bids his wife good-bye, and hies to his employ. His breakfast water-porridge, humble food; A barley-crust he in his wallet flings; On this he toils and labours in the wood, And chops his faggot, twists his band, and sings, As happily as princes and as kings With all their luxury:--and blest is he, Can but the little which his labour brings Make both ends meet, and from long debts keep free, And neat and clean preserve his numerous family. Far o’er the dreary fields the woodland lies, Rough is the journey which he daily goes; The woolly clouds, that hang the frowning skies, Keep winnowing down their drifting sleet and snows, And thro’ his doublet keen the north wind blows; While hard as iron the cemented ground, And smooth as glass the glibbed pool is froze; His nailed boots with clenching tread rebound, And dithering echo starts and mocks the clamping sound.