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).