Schoolboys in Winter

The schoolboys still their morning ramble take

To neighboring village school with playing speed,

Loitering with passtime's leisure till they quake,

Oft looking up the wild-geese droves to heed,

Watching the letters which their journeys make;

Or plucking haws on which their fieldfares feed,

And hips and sloes; and on each shallow lake

Making glib slides, where they like shadows go

Till some fresh passtimes in their minds awake.

Then off they start anew and hasty blow

Their numbed and clumpsing fingers till they glow;

Then races with their shadows wildly run

That stride huge giants o'er the shining snow

In the pale splendour of the winter sun.