The schoolboys still their morning ramble take <br />To neighboring village school with playing speed, <br />Loitering with passtime's leisure till they quake, <br />Oft looking up the wild-geese droves to heed, <br />Watching the letters which their journeys make; <br />Or plucking haws on which their fieldfares feed, <br />And hips and sloes; and on each shallow lake <br />Making glib slides, where they like shadows go <br />Till some fresh passtimes in their minds awake. <br />Then off they start anew and hasty blow <br />Their numbed and clumpsing fingers till they glow; <br />Then races with their shadows wildly run <br />That stride huge giants o'er the shining snow <br />In the pale splendour of the winter sun.<br /><br />John Clare<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/schoolboys-in-winter/
