The snow falls deep; the forest lies alone;

The boy goes hasty for his load of brakes,[61]

Then thinks upon the fire and hurries back;

The gipsy knocks his hands and tucks them up,

And seeks his squalid camp, half hid in snow,

Beneath the oak which breaks away the wind,

And bushes close in snow-like hovel warm;

There tainted mutton wastes upon the coals,

And the half-wasted dog squats close and rubs,

Then feels the heat too strong, and goes aloof;

He watches well, but none a bit can spare,

And vainly waits the morsel thrown away.

Tis thus they live—a picture to the place,

A quiet, pilfering, unprotected race.

John Clare

82

The gipsies lit their fires by the chalk-pit gate anew,

And the hoppled horses supped in the further dusk and dew;

The gnats flocked round the smoke like idlers as they were

And through the goss and bushes the owls began to churr.

An ell above the woods the last of sunset glowed

With a dusky gold that filled the pond beside the road;

The cricketers had done, the leas all silent lay,