Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life

Within the circuit of this plodding life

There enter moments of an azure hue,

Untarnished fair as is the violet

Or anemone, when the spring strews them

By some meandering rivulet, which make

The best philosophy untrue that aims

But to console man for his grievances

I have remembered when the winter came,

High in my chamber in the frosty nights,

When in the still light of the cheerful moon,

On every twig and rail and jutting spout,

The icy spears were adding to their length

Against the arrows of the coming sun,

How in the shimmering noon of summer past

Some unrecorded beam slanted across

The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;

Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,

The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag

Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,

Which now through all its course stands still and dumb

Its own memorial,—purling at its play

Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,

Until its youthful sound was hushed at last

In the staid current of the lowland stream;

Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,

And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,

When all the fields around lay bound and hoar

Beneath a thick integument of snow.

So by God's cheap economy made rich

To go upon my winter's task again.