Hold on, thou heart, though lonely and alone,

Though wife, nor child, nor friend, nor parent smile!
Hold on, though love and sympathy be lost!

Be ever brave, though buried thou dost seem,
In the lone grave-yard of obscurity,

Far from the spheres where minds accordant dwell,
Where rude hearts beat no loved response to thine,
Nor yield their homage to superior birth!
Hope on! love on! and be to earth's old life,
What straggling hairs are to the aged head,
Memorials priceless of the early years,
The silent teachers of immortal truths!
The time of blessing shall arrive at last,

And men shall own in wonderment thy worth!

Not of one season is the year composed;
Its months are varied that it may be blest,
And Winter's teeth are indispensable,
And fully worth the Summer's warming smile;
Man's life is made of years, and must present
Misfortune's chill as well as fortune's warmth.
Like him, O varying yet unvaried Tide!

I see thee change and still remain the same:
On thee the Frost his jewelled signet sets,
And makes thee glisten in new shapes of light.

There came erewhile the power whose breath consumes
The Summer's heat and gives her forms to death;
The forest leaves grew pale at his approach,

And in his hand the sunbeams seemed like spears,
Wherewith he pierced their hearts until they bled,
And lifeless fell to earth in reddening gore;
The fertile soil, now yielding pliantly

To the soft dalliance of the showers and winds,
Now like some captive in a slave-mart chained,
Stands sullen and constrained with spirit crushed;
All cramped and stiffened, like a stricken form,
In strong spasmodic swoons it rolls and groans;
Through forest limbs the hoarse winds howl like wolves
With sharpened teeth and claws unmerciful,

Seeking in hungry madness for their prey;

The refted branches strain and crack their joints,

In vain collision with their ravager.

Now falls the hurrying sleet, till icicles

Impend from every jutting point, and clothe
Each trunk and pensile bough all beauteously,
As if the potent Genii of the deep,

Or of the mines where pearls and diamonds rest,
Had quickly, at the touch of magic lamp,

Or voice imperative of master-sprites,

Gathered their treasures from their cells and caves,
And hung them glittering on each leafless tree.

Far as the vision journeys round the fields,
How every branch begemmed in beauty shines
With sunlit radiance and with rainbow hues!
How many myriad eyes seem twinkling now
Through every icy interstice of boughs,

As if yon firmament were lowered to earth,
And stars had come to visit us in love,
On sunbeam-wings to cheer our spirits sad,
And bid us think that cold though life may be,
And full of chilling words and frosted hearts,
There still gleams down upon its withered things
The light of Heaven to kindle up the soul,
And make us smile e'en 'mid our cankered hopes.
Oh! blessed thought, that on the frozen breast,
However desolate its inner cells,

The forms of beauty and the beams of love,
Will sometimes from the outward world approach,
Or from above it fall, whose influence sweet
Will penetrate its labyrinths so dark,

Will pass the portals of the locked-up heart,
And hang its necklaces of joy about;

Or bent o'er its cold hearth with warming breath,
Will light its sparkless embers yet once more,
And make the loves of earth blaze up again.

Come, look o'er Nature still and mark her change;
The wide lakes once in joyance tossing up

Their free-born waves, now lie enslaved with all,
Yet struggling fiercely to escape the grasp
Of Winter's hand, until their ice-ribs float
In thick confusion with their under-tide,
Like coral islands built up 'neath the sea;
On to thy rocky summit, O dread Fall!
They rush unchecked, upon each other piled,

Till rising up, like ships with crowded sails,
That form the armaments of earth at sea,
They sweep impetuous with the swift-heeled tide,
Upon their foes to bear down ruinously,
Or meet destruction from a rival's strength;
On through the narrow channels, 'twixt the isles
That seem to tremble at their fierce attacks,
They move resistless to the groaning verge,
And with the crash of worlds sink in th' abyss
All shattered! Into myriad atoms torn,
They rise up with the tide like shipwrecked barks,
That hurled on rocky shores dismembered lie,
Their shivered timbers and their coppered keels,
Their broken spars and tattered sails, strewed round.
Here in the stream e'en at the Cataract's base,
The crowding wrecks in high embankments rise,
While masses borne by under-currents down,
Upheave the masses which above them lie,
Until piled up, those towering icebergs seem
Like forts erected to defend the land,
With pointed palisades around them fixed.
Slowly they mount that height, before unscaled,
With icy parapets and pickets high,
That with imprisoning power surround the tide,
Whose murmur deep seems now to speak despair,
And mourn the chilling bondage that it bears!
So art thou conquered, O proud Cataract!
So strong is Winter's hand that knows no check,
And triumphs ever over thee in joy!

Yet glorious art thou in thy bondage still,
Thou Alp majestic 'mid the fettered floods!

For thou dost tower like snow-clad mountains high,
Whose glacier-tops with avalanche unmoved,
Defy the sun to melt their frozen crowns,

That steal the radiance of the earliest dawn,
And shine with eyes that rival e'en the stars!
I see thee sitting like a Roman chief

Upon his curule chair in forum halls,

Looking with quick and piercing glance around,
While lictors frontward stand, his body-guard,
With threatening fasces to enforce his word;
Or like an army filed in bold array,

With muskets bright and bristling bayonets,

That daze the foemen's eyes which miss their aim.

The snow comes now in flakes, that fall o'er thee
Like bridal veils before a virgin brow;

"Twould seem that Winter thus, mistaking thee

For some pure maid, would make thee now his bride, And so like many wed old age to youth;

Or else he comes, with his monastic hand,

To thee all clothed in white, that like a nun,

Thou mayst here vow and shut thyself from earth!

I have looked up on tall ancestral piles

Of Gothic architecture framed by art,

With marble quarried from the whitened rock,
That lifted high their turrets in the light,