Sonnet XXXVIII Winter
If he whose bosom with no transport swells
In vernal airs and hours commits the crime
Of sullenness to Nature, ’gainst the Time,
And its great Ruler, he alike rebels
Who seriousness and pious dread repels,
And aweless gazes on the faded Clime,
Dim in the gloom, and pale in the hoar rime
That o’er the bleak and dreary prospect steals.—
Spring claims our tender, grateful, gay delight;
Winter our sympathy and sacred fear;
And sure the Hearts that pay not Pity’s rite
O’er wide calamity; that careless hear
Creation’s wail, neglect, amid her blight,
The solemn lesson of the ruin’d Year.
December 1st, 1782.