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John Clare - The Winter`s Come
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Sweet chestnuts brown like soling leather turn;
  The larch trees, like the colour of the Sun;
That paled sky in the Autumn seemed to burn,
  What a strange scene before us now does run--
Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black, and dun;
  White thorn, wild cherry, and the poplar bare;
The sycamore all withered in the sun.
  No leaves are now upon the birch tree there:
  All now is stript to the cold wintry air.

See, not one tree but what has lost its leaves--
  And yet the landscape wears a pleasing hue.
The winter chill on his cold bed receives
  Foliage which once hung oer the waters blue.
Naked and bare the leafless trees repose.
  Blue-headed titmouse now seeks maggots rare,
Sluggish and dull the leaf-strewn river flows;
  That is not green, which was so through the year
  Dark chill November draweth to a close.

Tis Winter, and I love to read indoors,
  When the Moon hangs her crescent up on high;
While on the window shutters the wind roars,
  And storms like furies pass remorseless by.
How pleasant on a feather bed to lie,
  Or, sitting by the fire, in fancy soar
With Dante or with Milton to regions high,
  Or read fresh volumes we`ve not seen before,
  Or oer old Burton`s Melancholy pore.
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