Poems (Trask)/A Memory of Winter
A MEMORY OF WINTER.
All day, in flakes of saintly white, The snow fell down; Wrapping in ermine folds the height Above the town; Hanging each patient hemlock-tree With bridal veils; Changing the forest to a sea Flecked with white sails.
Over each savage, black-browed rock, Climb crystal flowers,—Wild lily-cup, and holly-hock, From winter's bowers; And on the hillside, by the spring, Rise pillared fanes, Gorgeous enough for reigning king And all his thanes.
A silence steals upon the earth; The snow-mists flee; The winds wake unto stronger birth Their minstrelsy; Their organ bass on high they shriek Through the cold sky, Rending the dismal silence bleak With their wild cry.
Forth from their prisons peep the stars, Like frightened girls When battle-smoke round brave hussars Its red fog curls; And wildly on the sky's broad plain The cloud-forms reel, Like men when cannon's deadly rain Breaks coats of steel.
Eastward the troop of gloom-black clouds Take up their march; Seeming like dismal funeral shrouds On heaven's arch; Building above the shuddering world A cenotaph, Writing on scroll of blue unfurled God's autograph.
Cold, cold the icy wind comes down From Northern moors, Frightening the stray birds feathered brown,— Hark! how it roars! Tumbling the restless, feathery snow To swelling hills; Filling the air with frosty glow And frozen chills.
The moonlight silent as the dead, And ghostly white, Sinks down through weird and frosty void, Down, in the night, Dropping upon the river's breast A mail of pearl, On each still wave a diamond crest Fit for an earl.
The mountain cliffs crash wide apart, With deafening sound; And up the answering echoes start From all around; The fierce winds with their bellowings strive, Making high boasts, Until the whole earth seems alive With noisy ghosts.
The regal Night tramps grandly on, The still stars flame; And high in heaven the cold, calm moon Shines on, the same; Pallid and white the great earth lies,— A conquered thing,—Submissive to the stern decrees Of Winter-King.