Frost Magic

Now, in the moonrise, from a wintry sky,

The frost has come to charm with elfin

This quiet room; to draw with symbols

Faces and forms in fairest

Upon the casement; all the thoughts that

Deep hidden in my heart's core he would tell,

How the red shoots of fancy strike and swell,

How they are watered, what soil nourished by.

With eerie power he piles his atomies,

Incrusted gems, star-glances

With lids of sleep pulled from the moth's bright eyes,

And forests of frail ferns, blanched and forlorn,

Where Oberon of unimagined

Might in the silver silence wind his horn.

With these alone he draws in magic lines,

Faces that people dreams, and chiefly

Happy and brilliant as the northern sun,

And by its darling side there gleams and

One of God's children with the laughing

Of dimples, and glad accents, and sweet cries,

That angels are and heaven's memories:

The wizard thus my soul's estate divines;

All it holds dear he sets alone apart,

Etches the past in likeness of dim

Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art,

In crystal spoils and fairy treasure-troves,

He draws the picture of the happy heart,

By those who love it most, whom most it loves.