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Winter

The long days came and went; the riotous

Tore the warm grapes in many a dusty vine,

And men grew faint and thin with too much ease,

And Winter gave no sign:

But all the while beyond the northmost

He sat and smiled and watched his spirits

In elfish dance and eery roundelay,

Tripping in many

With snowy curve and fairy crystal shine.

But now the time is come: with southward

The elfin spirits pass: a secret

Hath fallen and smitten flower and fruit and weed,

And every leafy thing.

The wet woods moan: the dead leaves break and fall;

In still night-watches wakeful men have

The muffled pipe of many a passing bird,

High over hut and hall,

Straining to southward and unresting wing.

And then they come with colder feet, and

The winds with snow, and tuck the streams to

With icy sheet and gleaming coverlet,

And fill the valleys

With curved drifts, and a strange music

Among the pines, sometimes in wails, and

In whistled laughter, till affrighted

Draw close, and into

And earthy holes the blind beasts curl and creep.

And so all day above the toiling

Of men's poor chimneys, full of impish freaks,

Tearing and twisting in tight-curled

The vain unnumbered reeks,

The Winter speeds his fairies forth and

Poor bitten men with laughter icy cold,

Turning the brown of youth to white and

With hoary-woven locks,

And grey men young with roses in their cheeks.

And after thaws, when liberal water

The bursting eaves, he biddeth drip and

The curly horns of ribbed

In many a beard-like row.

In secret moods of mercy and soft dole,

Old warped wrecks and things of mouldering

That summer scorns and man

His careful hands

With lawny robes and draperies of snow.

And when the night comes, his spirits with chill feet,

Winged with white mirth and noiseless mockery,

Across men's pallid windows peer and fleet,

And smiling

Draw with mute fingers on the frosted

Quaint fairy shapes of iced witcheries,

Pale flowers and glinting ferns and frigid

And meads of mystic grass,

Graven in many an austere phantasy.

But far away the Winter dreams alone,

Rustling among his snow-drifts, and

Cold fondling ears to hear the cedars

In dusky-skirted

Strange answers of an ancient runic call;

Or somewhere watches with antique eyes,

Gray-chill with frosty-lidded reveries,

The silvery moonshine

In misty wedges through the girth of pines.

Poor mortals haste and hide away: creep

Into your icy beds: the embers die:

And on your frosted panes the pallid

Is glimmering brokenly.

Mutter faint prayers that spring will come e'erwhile,

Scarring with thaws and dripping days and

The shining majesty of him that

And slays you with a

Upon his silvery lips, of glinting mockery.

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Archibald Lampman

Archibald Lampman (17 November 1861 – 10 February 1899) was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps t…

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