And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw.
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;
To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

From Shakspeare to Thomson is something of a descent, but we must
make it before we can find any Winter poetry worth quoting.
Here is a picture, ready-made, for Landseer to put into form and
color:

"There, warm together pressed, the trooping deer
Sleep on the new-fallen snows; and scarce his head
Raised o'er the heapy wreath, the branching elk
Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss.
The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils,
Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives
The fearful flying race: with ponderous clubs,
As weak against the mountain-heaps they push
Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray,
He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows,
And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home."

Cowper is superior to Thomson as a painter of Winter, although it
is doubtful whether he was by nature the better poet. Here is one
of his pictures: