WINTER.

The long days came and went; the riotous bees

Tore the warm grapes in many a dusty-vine,

And men grew faint and thin with too much ease,

And Winter gave no sign:

But all the while beyond the northmost woods

He sat and smiled and watched his spirits play

In elfish dance and eery roundelay,

Tripping in many moods

With snowy curve and fairy crystal shine.

But now the time is come: with southward speed

The elfin spirits pass: a secret sting

Hath fallen and smitten flower and fruit and weed,

And every leafy thing.

The wet woods moan: the dead leaves break and fall;

In still night-watches wakeful men have heard

The muffled pipe of many a passing bird,

High over hut and hall,

Straining to southward with unresting wing.

And then they come with colder feet, and fret

The winds with snow, and tuck the streams to sleep

With icy sheet and gleaming coverlet,

And fill the valleys deep

With curvèd drifts, and a strange music raves

Among the pines, sometimes in wails, and then

In whistled laughter, till affrighted men

Draw close, and into caves

And earthy holes the blind beasts curl and creep.

And so all day above the toiling heads

Of men's poor chimneys, full of impish freaks,

Tearing and twisting in tight-curlèd shreds

The vain unnumbered reeks,

The Winter speeds his fairies forth and mocks

Poor bitten men with laughter icy cold,

Turning the brown of youth to white and old

With hoary-woven locks,

And grey men young with roses in their cheeks.

And after thaws, when liberal water swells

The bursting eaves, he biddeth drip and grow

The curly horns of ribbèd icicles

In many a beard-like row.

In secret moods of mercy and soft dole,

Old warpèd wrecks and things of mouldering death

That summer scorns and man abandoneth

His careful hands console

With lawny robes and draperies of snow.

And when night comes, his spirits with chill feet,

Winged with white mirth and noiseless mockery,

Across men's pallid windows peer and fleet,

And smiling silverly

Draw with mute fingers on the frosted glass

Quaint fairy shapes of icèd witcheries,

Pale flowers and glinting ferns and frigid trees

And meads of mystic grass,

Graven in many an austere phantasy.

But far away the Winter dreams alone,

Rustling among his snow-drifts, and resigns

Cold fondling ears to hear the cedars moan

In dusky-skirted lines

Strange answers of an ancient runic call;

Or somewhere watches with his antique eyes,

Gray-chill with frosty-lidded reveries,

The silvery moonshine fall

In misty wedges through his girth of pines.

Poor mortals haste and hide away: creep soon

Into your icy beds: the embers die;

And on your frosted panes the pallid moon

Is glimmering brokenly.

Mutter faint prayers that spring will come e'erwhile,

Scarring with thaws and dripping days and nights

The shining majesty of him that smites

And slays you with a smile

Upon his silvery lips, of glinting mockery.