ring stem its magic weaves
A mantle fair as lily-leaves.

All day it snows: the sheeted post
Gleams in the dimness like a ghost;
All day the blasted oak has stood
A muffled wizard of the wood;
Garland and airy cap adorn
The sumach and the wayside thorn,
And clustering spangles lodge and shine
In the dark tresses of the pine.

The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old,
Shrinks like a beggar in the cold;
In [v]surplice white the cedar stands,
And blesses him with priestly hands.

Still cheerily the chickadee
Singeth to me on fence and tree:
But in my inmost ear is heard
The music of a holier bird;
And heavenly thoughts as soft and white
As snow-flakes on my soul alight,
Clothing with love my lonely heart,
Healing with peace each bruised part,
Till all my being seems to be
Transfigured by their purity.

JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.

=HELPS TO STUDY=

When did this storm begin? Read lines which show this. Give reasons
for your answer. What comparisons are used by the poet in
describing the snowfall? Which comparison do you like best? What
healing thought does the storm bring to the poet? Compare it with
the same thought in _The First Snowfall_.

A GEORGIA FOX HUNT[177-*]

I

In the season of 1863, the Rockville Hunting Club, which had been newly
organized, was at the height of its success. It was composed of men too
old to go in the army, and of young men who were not old enough, or who,
from one cause and another, were exempted from military service.
Ostensibly, its object was to encourage the noble sport of fox-hunting
and to bind by closer ties the congenial souls whose love for horse and
hound and horn bordered on enthusiasm. This, I say, was its
[v]ostensible object, for it seems to me, looking back upon that
terrible time, that the main purpose of the association was to devise
new methods of forgetting the sickening [v]portents of disaster that
were even then thick in the air. Any suggestion or plan calculated to
relieve the mind from the weight of the horror of those desperate days
was eagerly seized upon and utilized. With the old men and the fledgling
boys in the neighborhood of Rockville, the desire to escape momentarily
the realities of the present took the shape of fox-hunting and other
congenial amusements. With the women--ah well! Heaven only knows how
they sat dumb and