The First Snow-fall.
The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.
Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.
From sheds new roof’d with Carrara
Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow;
The stiff sails were softened to swan’s down,
And still flutter’d down the snow.
I stood and watch’d by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds
Like brown leaves whirling by.
I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little head-stone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.
Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?”
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.
Again I look’d at the snow-fall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arch’d o’er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heap’d so high.
I remember’d the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plung’d woe.
And again to the child I whisper’d,
“The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!”
Then, with eyes that saw not, I kiss’d her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.