A December Day by Judge J. A. Kerr

Low-drifting clouds o’erspread the sky;
The day is dull, the landscape drear;
On earth’s fair bosom snowflakes lie,
While trees, their snow-clad branches rear.

From lowering clouds the winter rain,
Cheerless, descends no longer, now;
To patter loud on roof and pane,
But falls the dancing flakes of snow.

The birds give forth no notes of cheer,
For they have flown. The woods are still;
The fields are shorn, and brown, and sear;
Ice-bound are river, brook and rill.

All nature seems grown gray with rime,
And long for rest—to die, to sleep;
Like man, woos sweet rest, courts decline,
And feels the death-chill oer her creep.

Her race seems short, and almost run:
Her knell is tolled by pattering hail.
In clouds of crape is clad the sun;
The wind gives forth a moaning wall.

The earth seems wrapped in her last sleep—
All nature robed in shrouds of snow.
The lowering clouds in pity weep,
That she, like man, is thus laid low.