46 IIESIOD.

absence of any certain data, combine to facilitate our acceptance of this fine passage as the poet's own handi- work. Indeed, it were a hard fate for any poet if, in the lapse of years, his beauties were to be pronounced spurious by hypercriticism, and his level passages alone left to give an idea of his calibre. We give the descrip- tion of winter from Elton's version : " Beware the January month ; beware Those hurtful days, that keenly -piercing air Which flays the steers, while frosts their horrors cast, Congeal the ground, and sharpen every blast. From Thracia's courser-teeming region sweeps The northern wind, and, breathing on the deeps, Heaves wide the troubled surge : earth, echoing, roars From the deep forests and the sea-beat shores. He from the mountain-top, with shattering stroke, Rends the broad pine, and many a branching oak Hurls 'thwart the glen : when sudden, from on high, With headlong fury rushing down the sky, The whirlwind stoops to earth ; then deepening round Swells the loud storm, and all the boundless woods resound. The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold, And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold. Though thick the hairy coat, the shaggy skin, Yet that all-chilling breath shall pierce within. Not his rough hide the ox can then avail, The long-haired goat defenceless feels the gale ; Yet vain the north wind's rushing strength to wound The flock, with sheltering fleeces fenced around. And now the horned and unhorned kind, Whose lair is in the wood, sore famished grind Their sounding jaws, and frozen and quaking fly, Where oaks the mountain-dells imbranch on high ;