University of Virginia Library

A Winter Scene.—Idle Man.

But Winter has yet brighter scenes;—he boasts
Splendors beyond what gorgeous Summer knows,
Or Autumn, with his many fruits and woods
All flushed with many hues. Come, when the rains
Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice.
When the slant sun of February pours
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps,
And the broad, arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering. Look, the massy trunks
Are cased in the pure crystal, branch and twig
Shine in the lucid covering; each light rod,
Nodding and twinkling in the stirring breeze,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,
Still streaming, as they move, with colored light.
But round the parent stem the long, low boughs
Bend in a glittering ring, and arbors hide
The glassy floor. O! you might deem the spot
The spacious cavern of some virgin mine,
Deep in the womb of Earth, where the gems grow,
And diamonds put forth radiant rods, and bud
With amethyst and topaz, and the place
Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam
That dwells in them; or, haply, the vast hall
Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night,
And fades not in the glory of the sun;
Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts
And crossing arches, and fantastic aisles
Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost
Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye:—
Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault;
There the blue sky, and the white drifting cloud
Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams
Of sporting fountains, frozen as they rose,
And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air,
And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light,
Light without shade. But all shall pass away
With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks,
Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound
Like the far roar of rivers; and the eve
Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was wont.