The Frost Spirit

1389

He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where their pleasant green came forth,

And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth.

He comes, he comes,-the Frost Spirit comes! from the frozen Labrador,

From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o'er,

Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice and the luckless forms below

In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow!

He comes, he comes, the Frost Spirit comes! on the rushing Northern blast,

And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his fearful breath went past.

With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow

On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice below.

He comes, he comes,-the Frost Spirit comes! and the quiet lake shall feel

The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's heel;

And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass,

Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence

pass.

He comes, he comes,-the Frost Spirit comes! Let us meet him as we may,

And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power

away;

And gather closer the circle round, when that firelight dances

high,

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding

wing goes

by!

John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892]

1390

SNOW

Lo, what wonders the day hath brought,

Born of the soft and slumbrous snow!
Gradual, silent, slowly wrought;

Even as an artist, thought by thought,
Writes expression on lip and brow.

Hanging garlands the eaves o'erbrim,
Deep drifts smother the paths below;
The elms are shrouded, trunk and limb,
And all the air is dizzy and dim

With a whirl of dancing, dazzling snow.

Dimly out of the baffled sight

Houses and church-spires stretch away;
The trees, all spectral and still and white,
Stand up like ghosts in the failing light,

And fade and faint with the blinded day.

Down from the roofs in gusts are hurled

The eddying drifts to the waste below;
And still is the banner of storm unfurled,
Till all the drowned and desolate world
Lies dumb and white in a trance of snow.

Slowly the shadows gather and fall,

Still the whispering snow-flakes beat;

Night and darkness are over all:

Rest, pale city, beneath their pall!

Sleep, white world, in thy winding-sheet!

Clouds may thicken, and storm-winds breathe:
On my wall is a glimpse of Rome,--
Land of my longing!-and underneath
Swings and trembles my olive-wreath;
Peace and I are at home, at home!

Elizabeth Akers (1832-1911]

The Snow-Shower

TO A SNOW-FLAKE

WHAT heart could have thought you?

Past our devisal

(O filigree petal!)

Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,

From what Paradisal

Imagineless metal,

Too costly for cost?

Who hammered you, wrought you,

From argentine vapor?--

"God was my shaper.

Passing surmisal,

He hammered, He wrought me,

From curled silver vapor,

To lust of His mind:

Thou couldst not have thought me!

So purely, so palely,

Tinily, surely,

Mightily, frailly,

Insculped and embossed,

With His hammer of wind,

And His graver of frost."

1391

Francis Thompson (1859-1907]

THE SNOW-SHOWER

STAND here by my side and turn, I pray,
On the lake below thy gentle eyes;
The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray,
And dark and silent the water lies;
And out of that frozen mist the snow
In wavering flakes begins to flow;
Flake after flake

They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come

From the chambers beyond that misty veil;

Some hover in air awhile, and some

Rush prone from the sky like summer hail,

All, dropping swiftly, or settling slow,
Meet, and are still in the depths below;
Flake after flake

Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,
Come floating downward in airy play,
Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd
That whiten by night the Milky Way;
There broader and burlier masses fall;
The sullen water buries them all,-
Flake after flake,--

All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

And some, as on tender wings they glide
From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray,
Are joined in their fall, and, side by side,

Come clinging along their unsteady way;
As friend with friend, or husband with wife,
Makes hand in hand the passage of life;
Each mated flake

Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste

Stream down the snows, till the air is white,

As, myriads by myriads madly chased,

They fling themselves from their shadowy height. The fair, frail creatures of middle sky,

What speed they make, with their grave so nigh; Flake after flake

To lie in the dark and silent lake.

I see in thy gentle eyes a tear;

They turn to me in sorrowful thought; Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear, Who were for a time, and now are not; Like these fair children of cloud and frost, That glisten a moment and then are lost,Flake after flake,

All lost in the dark and silent lake.

Midwinter

Yet look again, for the clouds divide;
A gleam of blue on the water lies;
And far away, on the mountain-side,

A sunbeam falls from the opening skies;
But the hurrying host that flew between
The cloud and the water no more is seen;
Flake after flake,

At rest in the dark and silent lake.

1393

William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878]

MIDWINTER

THE speckled sky is dim with snow,
The light flakes falter and fall slow;
Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale,
Silently drops a silvery veil;
And all the valley is shut in
By flickering curtains gray and thin.

But cheerily the chickadee

Singeth to me on fence and tree;
The snow sails round him as he sings,
White as the down of angels' wings.

I watch the slow flakes as they fall
On bank and brier and broken wall;
Over the orchard, waste and brown,
All noiselessly they settle down,
Tipping the apple-boughs, and each
Light quivering twig of plum and peach.

On turf and curb and bower-roof
The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof;
It paves with pearl the garden-walk;
And lovingly round tattered stalk
And shivering stem its magic weaves
A mantle fair as lily-leaves.

The hooded beehive, small and low,
Stands like a maiden in the snow;
And the old door-slab is half hid
Under an alabaster lid.