Poems (Trask)/February

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

FEBRUARY.

There is a silence chill as death, and deep,
 O'er all the stretch of wood, and field, and plain;
River and brook are hushed in noiseless sleep;
 The fields wear garments white without a stain;
The bare gaunt trees are draped with glittering frost;
 The sun will change each diamond flake to gold.
Night, pitying them, because their leaves were lost,
 Covered their shivering limbs up from the cold
 With fleecy frost, soft feathery fold on fold.

The moaning pines have ceased their tireless song,
 And stand in majesty, erect and grim,
Black where the shadows lie in state along
 Their frozen labyrinths, so weird and dim;
But by-and-by the northern wind will rise,
 And through their organ-pipes his strong breath sweep,
And all the soul of song which underlies
 These subtle silences shall rouse from sleep,
 And stir to life, and sound, the hush so deep.

The lowlands, where the river winds its course,
 Its sinuous course, through swamp, and wood, and fell,
Are resonant with voices rude and hoarse,
 Which wake the echoes of the hemlock dell;
Sharp as the crack of deadly rifles breaks
 Upon the shuddering air when strife is dread,
The solid ice, which covers streams and lakes,
 Snaps where the frost its mail has sundered,
 As if the dead stream turned beneath its coffin-lid.

The stars grow faint, and merge into the glow
 Which bursts through all the sable face of night;
The waning moon far in the west hangs low,
 And sinks her lessening crescent out of sight;
The yellowing east glows warm, and streaks of fire
 Shoot zenith-ward, the horizon burns red;
The mountain-brows, that to the clouds aspire,
 Blush in the soft effulgence round them shed,
 And all the earth with sunlight is o'erspread.