01.07.2007, 11:00
Winter
To the short days, and the great vault of shade
The whitener of the hills, we come--alas,
There is no colour in the faded grass,
Save the thick frost on its hoar stems arrayed.
Cold is it: as a melancholy maid,
The latest of the seasons now doth pass,
With a dead garland, in her icy glass
Setting its spikes about her crispéd braid.
The streams shall breathe, along the orchards laid,
In the soft spring-time; and the frozen mass
Melt from the snow-drift; flowerets where it was
Shoot up--the cuckoo shall delight the glade;
But to new glooms through some obscure crevasse
She will have past--that melancholy maid.
To the short days, and the great vault of shade
The whitener of the hills, we come--alas,
There is no colour in the faded grass,
Save the thick frost on its hoar stems arrayed.
Cold is it: as a melancholy maid,
The latest of the seasons now doth pass,
With a dead garland, in her icy glass
Setting its spikes about her crispéd braid.
The streams shall breathe, along the orchards laid,
In the soft spring-time; and the frozen mass
Melt from the snow-drift; flowerets where it was
Shoot up--the cuckoo shall delight the glade;
But to new glooms through some obscure crevasse
She will have past--that melancholy maid.