A PLAGUE on your languages, German and Norse! <br />Let me have the song of the kettle; <br />And the tongs and the poker, instead of that horse <br />That gallops away with such fury and force <br />On this dreary dull plate of black metal. <br /> <br />See that Fly,--a disconsolate creature! perhaps <br />A child of the field or the grove; <br />And, sorrow for him! the dull treacherous heat <br />Has seduced the poor fool from his winter retreat, <br />And he creeps to the edge of my stove. <br /> <br />Alas! how he fumbles about the domains <br />Which this comfortless oven environ! <br />He cannot find out in what track he must crawl, <br />Now back to the tiles, then in search of the wall, <br />And now on the brink of the iron. <br /> <br />Stock-still there he stands like a traveller bemazed: <br />The best of his skill he has tried; <br />His feelers, methinks, I can see him put forth <br />To the east and the west, to the south and the north; <br />But he finds neither guide-post nor guide. <br /> <br />His spindles sink under him, foot, leg, and thigh! <br />His eyesight and hearing are lost; <br />Between life and death his blood freezes and thaws; <br />And his two pretty pinions of blue dusky gauze <br />Are glued to his sides by the frost. <br /> <br />No brother, no mate has he near him--while I <br />Can draw warmth from the cheek of my Love; <br />As blest and as glad, in this desolate gloom, <br />As if green summer grass were the floor of my room, <br />And woodbines were hanging above. <br /> <br />Yet, God is my witness, thou small helpless Thing! <br />Thy life I would gladly sustain <br />Till summer come up from the south, and with crowds <br />Of thy brethren a march thou should'st sound through the clouds, <br />And back to the forests again!<br /><br />William Wordsworth<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/written-in-germany-on-one-of-the-coldest-days-of-the-century/
