WINTER NIGHT.
O magical the winter night. Illusory this stretch
Of scarce imaginable greys. So shadowy a sketch
Only the fading inks of spirit-artistry can etch!
Here, is nor dawn nor eventide nor any light we know,
This ghostly incandescence and unearthly afterglow,
This far-spread conflagration of the fields of snow
That pales the clouds, snow-laden, and blanches all the night,
As though in place of moon and stars some spectral satellite.
Cast glamor on the earth and floods of violet light.
The wraithlike landscape glimmers, valley, lake and hill,
Unutterably patient! Intolerably still!
No inclination of a leaf nor songster's trill.
....So could one stand an hour, a day, a century,
Breathless!....What frozen silence. What immobility.
As of some grey unfinished world in age-long reverie.
O whither have you vanished, treading the leaves of fall,
Bright spirit of the summer, leaving the scene in thrall
To silence? To what springtime, far, far, beyond recall?
What far retreat of being, what ebbing of the flood
Of life to bless far landscapes anew with leaf and bud,
Has left this prospect passionless and charmed this stricken wood?
And yet, from depths how distant, that tide of green shall rise,
And that bright spirit come again with April in her eyes,
And winter's drear prostrations be amuséd memories.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1993, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 30 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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