Perceiv'st thou not the process of the year,
How the four seasons in four forms appear?
Like human life in every shape they wear:
Spring first, like infancy, shoots out her head,
With milky juice requiring to be fed. . . .
Proceeding onward, whence the year began,
The Summer grows adult, and ripens man;.
Autumn succeeds, a sober, tepid age,
Nor froze with fear, nor boiling into rage;
Last, Winter creeps along with tardy pace,
Sour in his front, and furrowed in his face.

DRYDEN.

O Winter! ruler of th' inverted year,
I crown thee king of intimate delights;
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know.

COWPER.

Truth bids me look on men as autumn leaves, And all they bleed for, as the summer's dust Driven by the whirlwind.

YOUNG.

Autumn, thrice happy time, Best portion of the various year, in which Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works, Lovely, to full perfection wrought.

PHILIPS.

And winter, lingering, chills the lap of spring. GOLDSMITH.

Spring has come with a smile of blessing,

Kissing the earth with her soft warm breath, Till it blushes in flowers at her gentle caressing,

And wakes from the winter's dream of

death.

Dear angel! that blowest with breath of glad

ness

The trump to waken the year in its grave, Shall we not hear, after death's deep sadness, A voice as tender to gladden and save? "ATLANTIC MONTHLY."

Lo, Winter comes, and all his heralds blow Their gusty trumpets, and his tents of snow Usurp the fields from whence sad Autumn flies,

Autumn that finds a southern clime or dies. The streams are dumb with woe; the forest grieves,

Wailing the loss of all its summer leaves:
As some fond Rachel on her childless breast
Clasps her thin hands where once her young
were pressed;

Then flings her empty arms into the air,
And swells the gale with her convulsed despair!
T. B. READ.

Let Winter come! let polar spirits sweep
The darkening world and tempest-troubled
deep!

Yet shall the smile of social love repay
With mental light the melancholy day.

CAMPBELL.

See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad, with all his rising train; Vapors, and clouds, and storms.

THOMSON.