Part 2 — THE FOUNTAIN IN WINTER.

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BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

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The northern winds are raw and cold,

And crust with ice the frozen mould;

The gusty branches lash the wall

With icicles that snap and fall.

There is no light on earth to-day—

The very sky is blank and gray;

Yet still the fountain’s quivering shaft

Leaps upward, as when Spring-time laughed.

No diamonds glitter on its brink,

No red-lipped blossoms bend to drink,

And on the blast, its fluttering wing

Is spread above no kindred thing.

The drops that strike the frozen mould

Make all the garden doubly cold,

And with a chill and shivering pain

I hear the fall of sleety rain.

The music that, in beamy May,

Told of an endless holyday,

With surly Winter’s wailings blent,

Becomes his dreariest instrument.

The water’s blithe and sparkling voice,

That all the Summer said, “rejoice!”

Now pours upon the bitter air

The hollow laughter of despair.

So, when the flowers of Life lie dead

Beneath a darker Winter’s tread,

The songs that once gave Joy a soul

Bring to the heart its heaviest dole.

The fresh delight that leaped and sung

The sunny bowers of Bliss among,

But gives to Sorrow colder tears,

And laughs to mock our clouded years.