University of Virginia Library

All day on the steel-clad road we sped,
The chill rails quivering 'neath our tread,
And snowflakes ever and yet again
Assailing our cars and coaches ten.
The bright-clad forests of weeks ago
Were waist-deep shivering in the snow:
Bare-armed, bare-headed, bare-shouldered stood
These sinless vagabonds of the wood,
Whom Nature each winter must condemn,
And bring their bleak white prisons to them.
The fields gave chilliness to the sight—
Great out-door rooms, with carpets of white,
And houses for furniture, pale with gloom,
As bare and desolate as a tomb,
Save when from a chimney-fountain broke
A lofty river of clear white smoke,
That climbed from the banks of a cloud-made sky,
And cozily greeted the careless eye,
And flaunted in eddy and current and wreath,
The cheer and comfort that dwelt beneath,
And made the wanderer wish that he
Within those cozier bounds might be,
While some one, maybe, in that same home,
Was “watching the train”, and longed to roam:
So easy it is to bewail our lot,
And ask the fates for what we have not.
The villages strung along the road
Had thatches of white on each abode,
And villagers, home by the frost-king sent,
To stay by their firesides seemed content,
Or, swaddled in furs, crept to and fro,
Like wanderers from the Esquimaux.