University of Virginia Library


25

WINTER.

Now Winter as a shrivelled scroll
Casts the rags of Summer away,
Naked and beautiful the stripped soul
Haunts the bare woods, austere and grey.
Clean in the quiet hour she goes
She has renounced the lure of sense,
More beautiful than the gold and rose
In her thin veil of innocence.
White as the snow she walks the woods,
More beautiful than the joyous Spring:
Scourged of the winds and washed by floods,
Spirit and flame, with a drooped wing.
There is not a stain in this pale light,
The new washed skies, the tonic air,
She, the moon's sister, walks the height,
A spiritual beauty past compare.
When all the Summer world is dust
And Autumn glories fallen to clay,
This soul of beauty, chill, august,
Wanders by wood and waterway.