A Winter Landscape

By Leigh Gordon Giltner

A mystic world mantled in white simarre

Arachne-spun with argent woof; her wede

Starred with strange crystals wrought from frozen spar,

Sprent with pearl frost-flowers; girt with diamond brede,

Rubied with berries red as drops of blood,

Befringed with gelid, many-irised gems;

Broidered with lace weft of an elfin brood —

Hoar filagree to deck her garment hems.

Sheer slanting down the sky an opal light

Pierces the snow-blur's veil of wannish gray,

In iridescent sheen, tingeing the dazzling white

With amethystine, gold or beryl ray.

Along the West the transient sunset gleam —

An ardor brief! Crimson on crimson grows

Till all the waning sky, incarnadine,

Glows like blown petals of a shattered rose.