High o’er the hill-tops moans the wild breezes,
As from the dark branches I hear the sad strain:
See the lean pauper by his grim hearth he freezes,
While comfort and plenty in palaces reign.

Dark is the visage of the rugged old ocean,
To the caves in the billow he rides his foamed steed:
As over the grim surges with his chariot in motion,
He spreads desolation, and laughs at the deed.

No more with the tempest the river is swelling,
No angry clouds frown, nor sky darkly lower;
The bee sounds her horn, and the gay news is telling
That spring is established with sunshine and showers.

In the pride of its beauty the young year is shining,
And nature with blossom is wreathing the trees;
The white and the green in rich clusters entwining,
And sprinkling their sweetness on the wings of the breeze.

O May, lovely goddess! what name can be grander?
What sunbeam so bright as thine own smiling eye;
With thy mantle of green, richly spangled in splendour,
At whose sight the last demon of winter does fly.

From her home in the grass see the primrose is peeping,
While diamond dew-drops around her is spread;
She smiles thro’ her tears like an infant that’s sleeping,
And to laughter is changed as her sorrows are fled.

The landscape around is now sprinkled with flowers,
The mountains are blue in their distant array;
The wreaths of green leaves are refreshed with the showers,
Like a moth in the sunshine the lark flees away.

How joyous the reapers, their harvest songs singing
As they see the maid bringing the flagon and horn;
And the goddess of plenty benedictions is flinging
Over meadows and pastures, and her barley and corn.

’Tis sweet on the hills with the morning sun shining,
To watch the rich vale as it brightens below;
’Tis sweet in the valley when day is declining,
To mark the fair mountains, deep tinged with its glow.

Now is the time when biting old Boreas
True to his calling,—the tempests impend;
His hailstones in fury is pelting before us,
Our fingers are smarting, and heads they are bent.

The cold winds do murmur, the bleak snow is falling,
The beasts of the forest from hunger doth call;
There is desolate evenings and comfortless mornings,
And gloomy noontides for one and for all.

Drear is thine aspect, tyrannical December,
O hast thou no mercy for the pitiless poor;
Christmas is thine, and we shall remember,
Though dark is thy visage, we honour thee more.