LATE SNOW

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling,

Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges

That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences,

Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted

The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air;

They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits,

Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled,

Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding,

But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland

Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows,

And lovely the film of falling flakes, so wayward and slack;

But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings,

Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.