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.
