On windy meads of icy brakes, Where, sheathed in sleet, the haw-tree stands, The moon looks down on glistening lands, Where with the cold each bramble shakes.
Last night the sleet made white the world: All day the wind moaned in the pines: Now like a wolf, that whines and whines, Like some wild wolf its hate is hurled
Against the hut upon the wold, And the one willow by the stream: Where, huddled, in the moon’s chill gleam, The houseless hare leaps through the cold.
The moon sinks low, the thin new-moon, And with it, like a bit of spar, Sinks down the large white evening-star, Beneath which earth seems crystal-hewn.
Slim o’er the tree-tops, weighed with white, The country church’s spire doth swell, A scintillating icicle; While fitfully the village light
Stabs, stains with sallow stars the dark: Homeward the creaking wagons strain: The smithy glares: the tavern’s vane Points northward in its ghostly sark.
And from the north, with stinging lash, Driving his herds of snow and sleet, Upon his steed of wind, whose feet Hurl through the iron woods and crash
Along the hills, with blow on blow, The tempest sweeps; before his shout The moon and stars are blotted out, And fold on fold rolls down the snow.
My thoughts have borne me far away To beauties of an older day, Where, crowned with roses, stands the Dawn, Striking her seven-stringed barbiton Of flame, whose chords give being to The seven colors, hue for hue; The music of the color-dream She builds the day from, beam by beam.
My thoughts have borne me far away To myths of a diviner day, Where, sitting on the mountain, Noon Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune Of rest and shade and clouds and skies, Wherein her calm dreams idealize Light as a presence, heavenly fair, Sleeping with all her beauty bare.
My thoughts have borne me far away To visions of a wiser day, Where, stealing through the wilderness, Night walks, a sad-eyed votaress, And prays with mystic words she hears Behind the thunder of the spheres, The starry utterance that is hers With which she fills the universe.
To it the forest tells The mystery that haunts its heart and folds Its form in cogitation deep, that holds The shadow of each myth that dwells In nature--be it Nymph or Fay or Faun-- And whispering of them to the dales and dells, It wanders on and on.