283. Nox Nivosa

SNOWFLAKES downfloating from the void

Upon my face,

Spilth of the silent alchemy employed

In deeps of space

Where viewless everlasting fingers ply

The power whose secret is the mystery

That doth my world encase;

Power that with equal ease outshakes

Yon architrave

Of massy stars in heaven and these frail flakes

Earth’s floor that pave;

Swings the flamed orbs with infinite time for dower

And strews these velvet jewels not an hour

Of sunshine that will brave;

Yet of whose clustered crystals none

But speaks the act

Of the hand that steers each ceaseless-wheeling sun

And to whose tact

Fire-wreath and spangled ice alike respond;

Thoughts from the void frozen to flower and frond,

Divinely all compact;

Snowflakes, of pureness unalloyed,

That in dark space

Are built, and spilt from out the teeming void

With prodigal grace,

Air-quarried temples though you fall scarce-felt

And all your delicate architecture melt

To tears upon my face,—

I too am such encrystalled breath

In the void planned

And bodied forth to surge of life and death;

And as I stand

Beneath this sacramental spilth of snow,

Crumbling, you whisper: ‘Fear thou not to go

Back to the viewless hand;

‘Thence to be moulded forth again

Through time and space

Till thy imperishable self attain

Such strength and grace

Through endless infinite refinement passed

By the eternal Alchemist that at last

Thou see Him face to face.’