Poems (Trask)/A Memory of Winter

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

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.