Classic Poem

Late does the sun begin his shorten'd race,
Languid, altho' no cloud obscures our view;
The nipping hoar-frost veils the shrivel'd grass,
Where, whilom, wav'd the cool refreshing dew.

Cold from the north his hooked atoms calls,
And ev'ry field in firmer fetters binds;
Rustling in show'rs the wither'd foliage falls,
Slow from the tree, the sport of eddy winds.

The birds, all flocking from their summer haunts,
On the corn-stubbles pick the costly grain,
His deadly snares the cruel sowler plants,
And intercepts the wing that flaps in vain.

Hard is their fate — if we may call it hard,
To shun the rigid winter's coming storms,
When famine threatens in the farmer's yard,
And drifted snow the desert field deforms.

The most familiar of all birds of song,
Domestic Red-breast, on the window sits,
While, seldom seen, tho' whirring all day long,
The active Wren from hedge to hedge still flits.

In signs like these, the plowman wisely reads
Approaching winter, and provides a wife;
The joyless season passes o'er their heads,
Left and unmark'd amid the sweets of life.

But wretched he! whom all the long dark night
Fate on a lonely couch has doom'd to ly;
Does M IRA frown at what I trembling write?
If M IRA frowns, that wretched swain am I.