He stoops to earth; shrill swells the storm around, And all the vast wood rolls a deeper 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 thickening fleeces fenced around. He bows the old man, crook’d beneath the storm; But spares the smooth-skin’d virgin’s tender form. [99]Yet from bland Venus’ mystic rites aloof, She safe abides beneath her mother’s roof: The suppling waters of the bath she swims, [100]With shining ointment sleeks her dainty limbs: In her soft chamber pillow’d to repose, While through the wintry nights the tempest blows. [101]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. O’er the swarth Æthiop rolls his bright career, And slowly gilds the Grecian hemisphere. And now the horned and unhorned kind Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famish’d grind Their sounding jaws, and froz’n and quaking fly Where oaks the mountain dells imbranch on high: They seek to couch in thickets of the glen, Or lurk deep-shelter’d in the rocky den. [102]Like aged men who, prop’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. I warn thee, now, around thy body cast, A thick defence, and covering from the blast: Let the soft cloak its woolly warmth bestow: The under-tunic to thy ankle flow: [103]On a scant warp a woof abundant weave; Thus warmly wov’n the mantling cloak receive: Nor shall thy limbs beneath its ample fold With bristling hairs start shivering to the cold. Shoes from the hide of [104]a strong-dying ox Bind round thy feet; lined thick with woollen socks: [105]And kid-skins ’gainst the rigid season sew With sinew of the bull, and sheltering throw Athwart thy shoulders when the rains impend; And let [106]a well-wrought cap thy head defend, And screen thine ears, while drenching showers descend. Bleak is the morn, when blows the north from high; Oft when the dawnlight paints the starry sky, A misty cloud suspended hovers o’er Heaven’s blessed earth with fertilizing store Drain’d from the living streams: aloft in air The whirling winds the buoyant vapour bear, Resolved at eve in rain or gusty cold, As by the north the troubled rack is roll’d. Preventing this, the labour of the day Accomplish’d, homeward bend thy hastening way: