Winter 's wild birthnight ! In the fretful East The uneasy wind moans with its sense of cold , And sends its sighs through gloomy mountain gorge , Along the valley , up the whitening hill , To tease the sighing spirits of the pines , And waste in dismal woods their chilly life . The sky is dark , and on the huddled leaves — The restless , rustling leaves — sifts down its sleet , Till the sharp crystals pin them to the earth , And they grow still beneath the rising storm . The roofless bullock hugs the sheltering stack , With cringing head and closely gathered feet , And waits with dumb endurance for the morn . Deep in a gusty cavern of the barn The witless calf stands blatant at his chain ; While the brute mother , pent within her stall , With the wild stress of instinct goes distraught , And frets her horns , and bellows through the night . The stream runs black ; and the far waterfall That sang so sweetly through the summer eyes , And swelled and swayed to Zephyr 's softest breath , Leaps with a sullen roar the dark abyss , And howls its hoarse responses to the wind . The mill is still . The distant factory , That swarmed yestreen with many-fingered life , And bridged the river with a hundred bars Of molten light , is dark , and lifts its bulk , With dim , uncertain angles , to the sky . Yet lower bows the storm . The leafless trees Lash their lithe limbs , and , with majestic voice , Call to each other through the deepening gloom ; And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion ; and the oak , Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered frosts , Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast , Forsakes its poise , and , with a booming crash , Sweeps a fierce passage to the smothered rocks , And lies a shattered ruin .