A

XXVII.

Minter.

N interesting passage from Hesiod is given below. The extract is taken from the "Works and Days," a poem giving instructions regarding agriculture, trade, and labor, blended with precepts of a moral character; and, in addition to the extremely remote date of its origin, the passage is also remarkable as one of the few instances in which a poet of the old heathen world has entered into detail of description on natural subjects. Its authenticity is, I believe, admitted. "The picturesque description given by Hesiod of Winter bears all the evidences of great antiquity," says a learned German critic

WINTER.

FROM HESIOD.

Beware the January month, beware

Those hurtful days, that keenly piercing air,
Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast
O'er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast.

From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth
O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the North,

And moves it with his breath; the ocean floods

Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods.
Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells

And strews with thick-branched pines the mountain dells
He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around;

The depth of forests rolls the roar of sound.

The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,

And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold;

Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,
But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.
Not his rough hide can then the ox avail;
The long-haired goat, defenseless, feels the gale;
Yet vain the northwind's rushing strength to wound
The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around.

Translation of SIR C. A. ELTON.

A WINTER SCENE.

FROM THE SEASONS."

The keener tempests rise; and fuming dun,
From all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend, in whose capacious womb

A vapory deluge lies, to snow congeal'd.

Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;

And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.

Through the bush'd air the whitening shower descends,

At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes
Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the sky,
With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields

Put on their winter robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts

Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their hoar head; and. ere the languid sun,
Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid and still,
Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox
Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,

The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first

Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor
Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is :
Till, more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispers'd,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.

HOLLY SONG.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh ho sing heigh ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly;
Then, heigh ho! the holly;

This life is most jolly!

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot;

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh ho sing heigh ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly;

Then, heigh ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly!

SHAKSPEARE.

AN OLD-FASHIONED HOLLY HEDGE.

Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than an impassable hedge of about four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five feet in diameter, which I can show in my gardens at Say's Court, at any time of the year, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves, the taller standards at orderly distances blushing with their natural coral-shorn and fashioned into columns and pilasters, architecturally shaped, at due distance?

EVELYN'S "Silva."

CHRISTMAS CAROL.

HOLLY AND IVY,

I.

Holly and Ivy made a great party,
Who should have the mastery

In lands where they go.

Then spake Holly, "I am fierce and jolly,

I will have the mastery

In lands where we go!"

Then spake Ivy, "I am loud and proud,
And I will have the mastery

In lands where we go!"

Then spake Holly, and bent down on his knee,
"I pray thee, gentle Ivy, essay me no villainy,
In lands where we go!"

II.

Nay, Ivy, nay, it shall not be, I wis,

Let Holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Holly standeth in the hall fair to behold;

Ivy stands without the door, she is full sore a cold.

Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.

Holly and his merry men, they dance now and they sing;
Ivy and her maidens they weep and their hands wring.

Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.

Ivy hath a lyke,* she caught it with the cold,
So may they all have that do with Ivy hold.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.

Holly he hath berries as red as any rose,

The foresters, the hunters, keep them for the does.

Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.

Ivy she hath berries as black as any sloe,

There come the owls and eat them as they goe.

Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.

Holly he hath birds, a full, fair flock,

The nightingale, the popinjay, the gentle laverock.
Nay, Ivy, nay, etc., etc.

Good Ivy say to us what bird hath thou;
None but the owlet that cries How! How!

Dating in the 14th century.

THE SEASONS.

A blue-eyed child that sits amid the noon,
O'erhung with a laburnum's drooping sprays,
Singing her little songs, while softly, 'round
Along the grass the checkered sunshine plays.

All beauty that is throned in womanhood,
Pacing a summer-garden's fountain-walks,

* Unexplained in any glossary.