THE WINTER SCENE
by Bliss Carman
The rutted roads are all like iron;
skies are keen and brilliant;
only oak-leaves cling in the bare woods,
or the hardy bittersweet.
Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on;
and all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice
that rings with stroke of skate and hockey stick,
or in the twilight cracks with a running whoop.
Bring in the logs of oak and hickory,
and make an ample blaze on the wide hearth.
Now is the time, with winter o'er the world,
for books and friends; and yellow candle-light,
and timeless lingering by the setting fire,
while all the shuddering stars are keen with
cold.
Out of the silent portal of the hours,
when frosts are come and all the hosts,
put on their burnished gear to march across the
night
and o'er a darkened earth in splendor shine,
slowly above the world Orion wheels
his glittering square, while on the shadowy hill
and throbbing like a sea light through the dusk,
Great Sirius rises in his flsahing blue,
lord of the winter night, untouched by time,
to hearten faith with thine unfaltering fire.
There are no hurts that beauty cannot ease,
no ills that love cannot at last repair
in the victorious progress of the soul.
Russet and white and grey is the oak wood in the
great snow.
Still from the North it comes,
whispering, settling, sifting through the trees,
o'erloading branch and twig.
The road is lost, clearing and meadow, stream
and ice bound pond
are made once more a trackless wilderness.
In the white hush where not a creature stirs;
and the pale sun is blotted from the sky,
in that strange twilight the lone traveller halts
to listen to the stealthy snowflake fall,
and then far off toward the Stamford shore
where through the storm the coastwise liners
go,
faint and recurrent on the muffled air
a foghorn booming through the smother - hark!
When the day changed and the mad wind died down,
the powdery drifts that all day long had blown
across the meadows and open fields
or whirled like diamond dust in the bright sun,
settled to rest, and for a tranquil hour
the lengthening bluish shadows on the snow
stole down the orchard slope, and a rose light
flooded the earth with beauty and with peace.
Then in the west behind the cedars black
the sinking sun stained red the winter dusk
with sullen flare upon the snowy ridge,
as a masterpiece by Hokusai,
where on a background gray, with flaming breath
a scarlet dragon dies in dusky gold.
from Sanctuary
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I am putting this one in also for I'm sure you all must be wondering, "where
is the rest of the house?" This is the east side of the house which
looks out over the maple syrup hill.