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WINTER
- ONE late November eve I stood
- Beneath an old oak tree,
- And every one of its yellow leaves
- Said something sad to me.
- “We’re tired, we’re old,” they moaned, “and the wind
- Pinches us cruelly!”
- The fields looked very bare and still;
- The river rippling near
- A word to the willows whispered
- That made them quake for fear,
- While every withered blade of grass
- Hung heavy with a tear.
- The cattle crouched beneath the hedge;
- The poor sheep never stirred;
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- In safest shelter of the wood
- Sat silent every bird;
- Only the rooks, in flying home,
- Made their hoarse voices heard.
- I thought the Vale—so smiling once—
- In anger seemed to frown,
- And wondering what this meant, I looked
- Across the fallows brown
- To the far hills, and thence I saw
- Old Winter coming down.
- He was not very near—but well
- That figure gaunt I know;
- His robe was made of woven mist,
- His cap of folded snow.
- I heard the rattling of his bones,
- With cold they shivered so.
- His face was withered, stern, and pale,
- His fingers long and thin,
- A lantern ’neath his mantle held
- The Northern Lights within;
- And prisoned winds in his monstrous bag
- Set up a fearful din.
- The trees of the forest saw, and tossed
- Their arms high in the air,
- The leaves fell quivering to the ground
- And left the branches bare.
- The flowers shut their eyes at once
- And died in mute despair.
- The river hurrying to the sea
- Stood still in sheer affright,
- Valley and hill sent wildly up
- To Heaven a long good‐night.
- Winter, ere morn, will bury them
- In a shroud of ghostly white!
A.K.
