Snow getting deeper,
Last chain’s tight,
Fingers like timber,
Bitter cold night.

Cab’s all toasty,
Rolling uphill,
Top speed thirty,
Bye-bye chill.

— Trucker Poet

Bitter Cold William Wordsworth

Several months aftwer Wordsworth died, his widown Mary published “The Prelude”. This lengthy autobiographical poem to Coleridge produced little interest at that time. Only years later did people recognize the work as his masterpiece.

Sonnet 24 – October 1803

  Six thousand Veterans practis'd in War's game,
  Tried Men, at Killicranky were array'd
  Against an equal Host that wore the Plaid,
  Shepherds and Herdsmen.--Like a whirlwind came
  The Highlanders, the slaughter spread like flame;
  And Garry thundering down his mountain-road
  Was stopp'd, and could not breathe beneath the load
  Of the dead bodies. 'Twas a day of shame
  For them whom precept and the pedantry
  Of cold mechanic battle do enslave.
  Oh! for a single hour of that Dundee
  Who on that day the word of onset gave!
  Like conquest would the Men of England see;
  And her Foes find a like inglorious Grave.

Bitter Cold – Stepping Westward

  While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of
    Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sun-set, in our
    road to a Hut where in the course of our Tour we had
    been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met,
    in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region,
    two well dressed Women, one of whom said to us, by
    way of greeting, "What you are stepping westward?"


  _"What you are stepping westward?"--"Yea_."
  --'Twould be a wildish destiny,
  If we, who thus together roam
  In a strange Land, and far from home,
  Were in this place the guests of Chance:
  Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
  Though home or shelter he had none,
  With such a Sky to lead him on?

  The dewy ground was dark and cold;
  Behind, all gloomy to behold;                            10
  And stepping westward seem'd to be
  A kind of _heavenly_ destiny;
  I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
  Of something without place or bound;
  And seem'd to give me spiritual right
  To travel through that region bright.

  The voice was soft, and she who spake
  Was walking by her native Lake:
  The salutation had to me
  The very sound of courtesy:                              20
  It's power was felt; and while my eye
  Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
  The echo of the voice enwrought
  A human sweetness with the thought
  Of travelling through the world that lay
  Before me in my endless way.