FROST FLOWERS
While we are sleeping, stealthily creeping,
They come, as the green comes in early spring;
Here there's a vine or root, here shows a tender shoot;
Faintest of posies, of ghostly roses,
Within this garden are blossoming.
They come, as the green comes in early spring;
Here there's a vine or root, here shows a tender shoot;
Faintest of posies, of ghostly roses,
Within this garden are blossoming.
What busy sprite, at the dead of the night,
Scatters the seeds of these magical weeds?
Frond of lily and flower of gilly,
Breathing out only an odor chilly.
Ferns that keep in their sculptured sleep
A memory of June's warm, spicy noons,
Of her starlit hollows and building swallows,
Of her waxing and waning moons?
Scatters the seeds of these magical weeds?
Frond of lily and flower of gilly,
Breathing out only an odor chilly.
Ferns that keep in their sculptured sleep
A memory of June's warm, spicy noons,
Of her starlit hollows and building swallows,
Of her waxing and waning moons?
But now that summer's smile has fled,
And all of her pomp and bloom lies dead,
Is it the souls of her flowers, again,
That reappear on my window pane,
Blooming at night in a splendor of white,
To fade away in the strong sunlight?
And all of her pomp and bloom lies dead,
Is it the souls of her flowers, again,
That reappear on my window pane,
Blooming at night in a splendor of white,
To fade away in the strong sunlight?
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