Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, "WINTER, BY DE MONSIEUR MARIGNY; DIRECTED TO SIR ROBERT COKE", by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

"WINTER, BY DE MONSIEUR MARIGNY; DIRECTED TO SIR ROBERT COKE", by                    
First Line: Bleak winter is from norway come
Last Line: I winter shall nor feel nor see
Subject(s): Winter


BLEAK Winter is from Norway come,
And such a formidable groom,
With 's icled beard, and hoary head,
That, or with cold, or else with dread,
Has frightened Phoebus out on's wit,
And put him int' an ague fit:
The Moon too, out of rev'rend care
To save her beauty from the air,
And guard her pale complexion,
Her hood and vizard mask puts on:
Old gray-pate Saturn too is seen,
Muffled up in a great bear's skin:
And Mars a quilted cap puts on,
Under his shining Morion:
And in these posting luminaries
It but a necessary care is,
And very consonant to reason,
To go well clad in such a season.
The very Heaven itself, alas!
Is now so paved with liquid glass,
That if they han't (on th' other side)
Learn'd in their younger days to slide,
It is so slippy made withal,
They cannot go two steps but fall.
The nectar which the Gods do troll,
Is frozen i' th' Celestial bowl,
And the cup-bearer Ganimede
Has capp'd his frizzled flaxed head.
The naked Gemini, God wot,
A very scurvy rhume have got;
And in this coldest of cold weathers,
Had they not been warm wrap'd in feathers,
Mercury's heels had been, I trow,
Pepper'd with running kibes e'er now.
Nor are these Deities, whom Love
To men has tempted from above
To pass their time on earth, more free
From the cold blast than th' others be.
For Truth, amidst the blust'ring rout,
Can't keep her torch from blowing out.
Justice, since none would take her word,
Has for a waistcoat pawn'd her sword;
And it is credibly related,
Her fillet's to a coif translated.
Fortune's foot's frozen to her ball,
Bright crystal from her nose does fall,
And all the work she now intends,
Is but to blow her fingers' ends.
The Muses have the schools forsook
To creep into the chimney nook,
Where, for default of other wood,
(Although it goes to his heart's blood)
Apollo, for to warm their shins,
Makes fires of lutes and violins.
The trout and grayling that did rove,
At liberty, like swift wing'd Dove,
In ice are crusted up and pent,
Enslav'd with the poor element.
'Tis strange! but what's more strange than these,
Thy bounties, Knight, can never freeze,
But e'en amidst the frost and snow
In a continued torrent flow;
Oh! let me come and live with thee,
I Winter shall nor feel nor see.





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