A DECEMBER MORNING.
Breaks in the wild and bleak December morn, Across shrunk woods and pallid skies like pearl: From hooded roofs white, sinuous smoke-wreaths curl Into the clear, sharp air; great boughs, wind-torn And storm-dismantled, sway from trunks forlorn. Under stark fences, snow-mists sift and swirl, And overhead, where night was wont to hurl Her ghostly drift, white clouds, wind-steered, are borne.
By drifted ways I climb the eastern hills, And watch the wind-swayed maples creak and strain; The muffled beeches moan their wintry pain; While over fields and frosty, silent rills, The breaking day the great, grey silence fills With far-heard voice and stir of life again.
IN THE FREEDOM OF THE SPRING.
When snows melt out and Winter breaks his chain, And earth, released from her shrivelled woe, Wakens beneath the warm suns come again, And thawed streams widen in their overflow, And woods with song and buddings gladder grow; ’Tis then I love to loose me from this life, Its cares, its gridings, and its sordid strife, And roam, kin-child with all earth’s souls that glow.
Far out in great north woods, wind-rocked and swung, When the soft south has warmed the wintry earth, In those glad days when lusty life is young, To bloom with waxen petals, spring’s new birth, And brawling brooklets haste in murmurous mirth; I slip life’s leash with freedom of the spring, While the young year in its first love doth fling New joys, new beauties, round the grey world’s girth.
Here in hushed dells, by mossy crags and steeps, Where silent pools stand moorèd in the air, Under the shade of woodlands, shy, cool deeps, Loved by lone creatures stealing to loiter there: The timid fawn, the loping, shadowy hare, The wily lynx, who secret haunts his prey; Here flutter of wings, athwart the drowsèd day, Wakes Solitude from out her hidden lair.
Big swollen rivers, haunting still, deep woods, Where dawn is midnight and faint dawn at noon, Sing under shadows, pausing in shimmering moods Of inky silence, glimmering like the moon