University of Virginia Library

15

[The north wind came up yesternight]

The north wind came up yesternight
With the new year's full moon,
And rising as she gained her height,
Grew to a tempest soon.
Yet found he not on heaven's face
A task of cloud to clear;
There was no speck that he might chase
Off the blue hemisphere,
Nor vapour from the land to drive:
The frost-bound country held
Nought motionable or alive,
That 'gainst his wrath rebelled.
There scarce was hanging in the wood
A shrivelled leaf to reave;

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316

No bud had burst its swathing hood
That he could rend or grieve:
Only the tall tree-skeletons,
Where they were shadowed all,
Wavered a little on the stones,
And on the white church-wall.

And by the churchyard as I came,
It seemed my spirit passed
Into a land that hath no name,
Grey, melancholy and vast;
Where nothing comes: but Memory,
The widowed queen of Death,
Reigns, and with fixed, sepulchral eye
All slumber banisheth.
Each grain of writhen dust, that drapes
That sickly, staring shore,
Its old chaotic change of shapes
Remembers evermore.
And ghosts of cities long decayed
And ruined shrines of Fate
Gather the paths, that Time hath made
Foolish and desolate.

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317

Nor winter there hath hope of spring,
Nor the pale night of day,
Since the old king with scorpion sting
Hath done himself away.