WINTER'S FÊTE.
I woke, and every lordling of the grove
Was clad in diamonds, and the lowliest shrub
Did wear its crest of brilliants gallantly.
The swelling hillocks, with their woven vines,
T far-seen forests, and the broken hedge,
Yea, every thicket gleam'd in bright array,
As for some gorgeous fête of fairy-land.
—Ho! jewel-keeper of the hoary North,
Whence hast thou all these treasures? Why, the mines
Of rich Golconda, since the world was young,
Would fail to furnish such a glorious show.
The queen, who to her coronation comes,
With half a realm's exchequer on her head,
Dazzleth the shouting crowd. But all the queens
Who since old Egypt's buried dynasty
Have here and there, amid the mists of time,
Lifted their tiny sceptres—all the throng
Of peeresses, who at some birth-night shine,
Might boast no moiety of the gems thy hand
So lavishly hath strewn o'er this old tree,
Fast by my window.
Every noteless thorn,
Even the coarse sumach and the bramble bush,
Do sport their diadems, as if, forsooth,
Our plain republic in a single night
Put forth such growth of aristocracy
That no plebeian in the land was left
