Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Snow MonotonesBen Hecht
A
Over the house-tops, up and down the sky,
Trailing its ermine and its ivory—
The lithe and sinuous snow creeps softly by.
The houses etched in stuccoed boundaries
Loom radiant, while in capricious flight
The snow paints ghostly summer on the trees.
The snow spreads out its long unbroken seas,
And frames each house in candied masquerade
Of quaint and crystaline geometries.
Or, swarming white and gently to and fro,
The souls of little birds come back again
And searching for the sky they used to know.
Bursts without sunset in a wind-whirled glow,
Blotting the day and leaving more alight
The glistening white nocturne of the snow.
Like some vague field of dreams that hides behind
A strange and delicate delirium
Of labyrinthine pallors, swift and blind.
Some sharp and sinister wind has given wing;
And all the world is blowing fast away,
The houses and the trees first vanishing.
A whimsically chiseled cameo
Whose life seems only the ephemeral
And pale diaphonous music of the snow.
In lacquered desolation; and outthrown
The blue and staring shadow of the sky
Appears above the emptied air—alone.
And yet the night is dark and mute and deep—
The faery stains that wander to and fro
Are what the night is dreaming in its sleep.