Poems (May)/Frost pictures
FROST PICTURES.
When, like a sullen exile driven forth, Southward, December drags his icy chain, He graves fair pictures of his native North On the crisp window pane. ==So some pale captive blurs, with lips unshorn, The latticed glass, and shapes rude outlines there, With listless finger, and a look forlorn, Cheating his dull despair. ==The fairy fragments of some Arctic scene, I see to-night; blank wastes of Polar snow, Ice-laden boughs, and feathery pines that lean Over ravines below. ==Black, frozen lakes, and icy peaks blown bare, Break the white surface of the crusted pane, And spear-like leaves, long ferns, and blossoms fair, Linked in a silvery chain. ==Draw me, I pray thee, by this slender thread, Fancy, thou sorceress, bending, vision-wrought, O'er that dim well, perpetually fed By the clear springs of thought! ==Northward I turn, and tread those dreary strands, Lakes where the wild-fowl breed, the swan abides; Shores where the white fox, burrowing in the sands, Harks to the droning tides. ==And seas where, drifting on a raft of ice, The she-bear rears her young; and cliffs so high, The dark-winged birds that emulate their rise Melt through the pale blue sky. ==There, all night long, with far-diverging rays And stalking shades, the red Auroras glow; From the keen heaven, mock suns with pallid blaze Light up the Arctic snow. ==Guide me, I pray, along those waves remote, That deep unstartled from its primal rest; Some errant sail, the fisher's lone, light boat, Borne waif-like o'er its breast! ==Lead me, I pray, where never shallop's keel Brake the dull ripples throbbing to their caves; Where the mailed glacier with his armed heel Spurs the resisting waves! ==Paint me, I pray, the phantom hosts that hold Celestial tourneys when the midnight calls, On airy steeds, with lances bright and bold, Storming her ancient halls! ==Yet, while I look, the magic picture fades, Melts the bright tracery from the frosted pane; Trees, vales, and cliffs, in sparkling snows arrayed, Dissolve in silvery rain. ==Without, the day's pale glories sink and swell Over the black rise of yon wooded height; The moon's thin crescent, like a stranded shell Left on the shores of night. ==Hark how the north wind, with a hasty hand Rattling my casement, frames his mystic rhyme; House thee, rude minstrel, chanting through the land Runes of the olden time!