Thomson and Pollok: containing The seasons, by James Thomson, and The course of time, by Robert Pollok, A. M.

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WINTER

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They draw the copious fry. With these, at eve,
They cheerful loaded to their tents repair;
Where, all day long in useful cares employ'd,
Their kind unblemish'd wives the fire prepare. 880
Thrice happy race! by poverty secured
From legal plunder and rapacious power:
In whom fell interest never yet has sown
The seeds of vice: whose spotless swains ne'er knew
Injurious deed, nor, blasted by the breath 885
Of faithless love, their blooming daughters woe.
Still pressing on, beyond Tornea's lake,
And Hecla flaming through a waste of snow,
And furthest Greenland, to the pole itself,
Where, failing gradual, life at length goes out, 890
The Muse expands her solitary flight;
And, hovering o'er the wild stupendous scene,
Beholds new seas beneath another sky.*
Throned in his palace of cerulean ice,
Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court;.- 895
And through his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is for ever heard:
IHee the grim tyrant meditates his wrath;
Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost;
Moulds his fi&rce hail, and treasures up his snows, 900
With which he now oppresses half the globe.
Thence, winding ebastward to the Tartar's coast,
She sweeps the howling margin of the main;
Where undissolving, from the first of time,
Snows swell on snows amazing to the sky; 905
And icy mountains high on mountains piled,
Seem to the shivering sailor from afar,
Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds.
Projected huge and horrid o'er the surge,
Alps frown on Alps; or, rushing hideous down, 010
As if old Chaos was again return'd,
Wide rend the deep, and shake the scOid pole.
iThe other hemisphere.
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