The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,

The valley to a shining mountain swells, Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky.

As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce, All Winter drives along the darkened air, 55 In his own loose-revolving fields the swain Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain; Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray

60

Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,

Stung with the thoughts of home: the thoughts of home

Rush on his nerves and call their vigour forth

65

In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!

What black despair, what horror fills his heart,

When, for the dusky spot which fancy

feigned

His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste,

70

Far from the track and blest abode of man; 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 75
Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smoothed up with snow; and (what is land
unknown,

What water) of the still unfrozen spring, 80
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,