The Cold Dead Year

Title

The Cold Dead Year

Artist

Josef Israels

Lent By

Humphrey Roberts, Esq.

Catalog Number

22

Catalog Page

4

Catalog Description

The grass is poor and the sky dull and heavy with coming rain, and there would be nothing to break the sadness of the picture if it were not that the boy's face is thoughtful and suggests that he can see above "the dull flats of earth" to the ;ine of blue sky in the distance. // The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, / The abre boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,/ And the year / On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, / Is lying. / Come months, come away,/ From november to May,/ In your saddest array;/ Follow the bier/ Of the dead cold year,/ And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.--(P. B. Shelley).