HOAR-FROST
The frail eidolons of all blossoms Spring,
Year after year, about the forest tossed,
The magic touch of the enchanter, Frost,
Back from the Heaven of the Flow’rs doth bring;
Each branch and bush in silence visiting
With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost:
Each dead weed bends, white-haunted of its ghost,
Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming.
This is the wonder-legend Nature tells
To the gray moon and mist a winter’s night;
The fairy-tale which from her fancy wells
With all the glamour of her soul’s delight:
Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes
Rising, as might a dream materialize.
COLD
A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook
Minutest frosty crystals in the air.
All night the wind was still as lonely Care
Who sighs before her shivering inglenook.
The face of Winter wore a cruder look
Than when he shakes the icicles from his hair,
And, in the boisterous pauses, lets his stare
Freeze through the forest, fettering bough and brook.
He is the despot now who sits and dreams
Of desolation and despair, and smiles
At poverty, who hath no place to rest,
Who wanders o’er Life’s snow-made-pathless miles,
And sees the Home-of-Comfort’s window gleams,
Hugging her rag-wrapped baby to her breast.
THE WINTER MOON
Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose,
A face of icy fire, o’er the hills;
With snow-sad eyes that froze the forest rills,
And snow-sad feet that bleached the meadow snows:
Pale as some young witch who, a-listening, goes
To her first meeting with the Fiend; whose fears
Fix demon eyes behind each bush she nears;
Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes.
And so I chased her, startled in the wood
Like a discovered oread, who flies
The faun who found her sleeping, each nude limb
Glittering betrayal through the solitude;
Till in a frosty cloud I saw her swim
Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice.