Sweet chestnuts brown like soling leather turn; <br />The larch trees, like the colour of the Sun; <br />That paled sky in the Autumn seemed to burn, <br />What a strange scene before us now does run-- <br />Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black, and dun; <br />White thorn, wild cherry, and the poplar bare; <br />The sycamore all withered in the sun. <br />No leaves are now upon the birch tree there: <br />All now is stript to the cold wintry air. <br /> <br />See, not one tree but what has lost its leaves-- <br />And yet the landscape wears a pleasing hue. <br />The winter chill on his cold bed receives <br />Foliage which once hung oer the waters blue. <br />Naked and bare the leafless trees repose. <br />Blue-headed titmouse now seeks maggots rare, <br />Sluggish and dull the leaf-strewn river flows; <br />That is not green, which was so through the year <br />Dark chill November draweth to a close. <br /> <br />Tis Winter, and I love to read indoors, <br />When the Moon hangs her crescent up on high; <br />While on the window shutters the wind roars, <br />And storms like furies pass remorseless by. <br />How pleasant on a feather bed to lie, <br />Or, sitting by the fire, in fancy soar <br />With Dante or with Milton to regions high, <br />Or read fresh volumes we've not seen before, <br />Or oer old Burton's Melancholy pore.<br /><br />John Clare<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-winter-s-come/
