Frost Work.
Mary E. Bradley.
No fairies left? You need not tell me so,
For in the night upon my window pane
Grew wondrous things that made me surely know
The fairies are at their old tricks again.
O wonder working spirit! if I could
But learn of you the secret of the snow—
How frost is given by the breath of God,
And where the hidden water courses flow;
And where begotten is the dew that strings
Her lovely pearls upon the meanest weed,
And what sweet animating influence brings
The blossom splendid from the trivial seed;
Could I but ride the south wind and the north,
And fathom all the mysteries they hold,
See how the lightning, leaping wildly forth,
And how the turbulent thunder is controlled,
I would no more be fretted by the greed
And selfishness of men; their puny spite,
Nor any worldly loss or cross indeed,
My lifted soul could evermore affright.
And wherefore now? The laughing fairy seems
To mock at me the spangled window through;
And I laugh also, waking from my dreams
To take up daily loss and cross anew.
But with a sense of things divinely planned,
That makes me sure I need not fear disdain,
From One who holds the thunder in his hand,
Yet stoops to trace the frost work on the pane.