Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/212

 While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep, A dire descent! beyond the power of frost, Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge, Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown, What water, of the still unfrozen spring, In the loose marsh or solitary lake, Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots Thro' the wrung bosom of the dying Man, His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. In vain for him th' officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their fire, With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense; And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse, Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.

little think the gay licentious proud, Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround; They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth, And wanton, often cruel, riot waste; Ah little think they, while they dance along, How many feel, this very moment, death And