A Wintry Picture

Now where the bare sky spans the landscape bare, Up long brown fallows creeps the slow brown team, Scattering the seed-corn that must sleep and dream, Till by Spring's carillon awakened there. Ruffling the tangles of his thicket hair, The stripling yokel steadies now the beam, Now strides erect with cheeks that glow and gleam, And whistles shrewdly to the spacious air. Lured onward to the distance dim and blear, The road crawls weary of the travelled miles: The kine stand cowering in unmoving files; The shrewmouse rustles through the bracken sere; And, in the sculptured woodland's leafless aisles, The robin chants the vespers of the year.