Read it through once

When winter comes and the river freezes, When the reeds are shorn and the little pools are still, The hippopotamus turns in his sleep and stamps. He breaks the ice with his great shoulders; He wades into the open water and snorts. He shakes the cold from his thick hide, And goes down into the deep, dark pools. There he feeds upon the roots of the water-plants, And lives in the silence and the dark.