Works

The flute, whence Summer's dreamy fingertips
Drew music, ripening the pinched kernels in
The burly chestnut and the chinquapin,
Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips,
Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips,...

When winter chills your aged bones
As by the fire you sit and nod,
You'll hear a passing wind that moans,
And think of one beneath the sod.

You'll feebly sleek your hair of grey,...

The small wind whispers through the leafless hedge
Most sharp and chill, where the light snowy flakes
Rest on each twig and spike of wither'd sedge,
Resembling scatter'd feathers;--vainly breaks...

His thundering car
Is heard from afar,
And his trumpet notes sound
All the country around;
Stop your ears as you will,
That loud blast and shrill
Is heard by you still....

The long days came and went; the riotous bees
Tore the warm grapes in many a dusty-vine,
And men grew faint and thin with too much ease,
And Winter gave no sign:
But all the while beyond the northmost woods...

With my breath so keen and chilling,
I have stripped the branches bare;
And my snow-flakes white are filling,
Feather-like, the frosty air.

Coming o'er the lofty mountains,...

Majestic King of storms! around
Thy wan and hoary brow
A spotless diadem is bound
Of everlasting snow:
Time, which dissolves all earthly things,
O'er thee hath vainly waved his wings!
...

The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw;
While tumbling brown, the burn comes down,...

In Winter when the air is chill,
And winds are blowing loud and shrill,
All snug and warm I sit and purr,
Wrapped in my overcoat of fur.

In Summer quite the other way,
I find it very hot all day,...

The city once again doth wear
Her wonted dress of winter's bride,
Her mantle woven of misty air,
With saffron sunlight faintly dyed.
She sits above the seething tide,
Of all her summer robes forlorn--...

All day between high-curded clouds the sun
Shone down like summer on the steaming planks.
The long, bright icicles in dwindling ranks
Dripped from the murmuring eaves till one by one...

WINTER.

Awake--arise! all my stormy powers,
The earth, the fair earth, again is ours!
At my stern approach, pale Autumn flings down
In the dust her broken and faded crown;...

Winter scourges his horses
Through the North,
His hair is bitter snow
On the great wind.
The trees are weeping leaves
Because the nests are dead,
Because the flowers were nests of scent...

Green star Sirius
Dribbling over the lake;
The stars have gone so far on their road,
Yet we're awake!

Without a sound
The new young year comes in
And is half-way over the lake....

"These winter days," my father says,
"When mornings blow and bite and freeze,
And hens sit cackling in the straw,
Stiff with the frost as gates that wheeze,
Remind me of my youth when, raw,...

Oh wind-swept towers,
Oh endlessly blossoming trees,
White clouds and lucid eyes,
And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant
With who knows what of subtlety
And magical curves and limbs--...

Dark frost was in the air without,
The dusk was still with cold and gloom,
When less than even a shadow came
And stood within the room.

But of the three around the fire,...

I watch the great clear twilight
Veiling the ice-bowed trees;
Their branches tinkle faintly
With crystal melodies.
The larches bend their silver
Over the hush of snow;...

The prospect is bare and white,
And the air is crisp and chill;
While the ebon wings of night
Are spread on the distant hill.

The roar of the stormy sea
Seem the dirges shrill and sharp...

To-night the very horses springing by
Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream
The streets that narrow to the westward gleam
Like rows of golden palaces; and high...