Winter

John Howard Bryant (1807–1902)

THE DAY had been a calm and sunny day,

And tinged with amber was the sky at even;

The fleecy clouds at length had rolled away,

And lay in furrows on the eastern heaven;—

The moon arose and shed a glimmering ray,

And round her orb a misty circle lay.

The hoar-frost glittered on the naked heath,

The roar of distant winds was loud and deep,

The dry leaves rustled in each passing breath,

And the gay world was lost in quiet sleep.

Such was the time when, on the landscape brown,

Through a December air the snow came down.

The morning came, the dreary morn, at last,

And showed the whitened waste. The shivering herd

Lowed on the hoary meadow-ground, and fast

Fell the light flakes upon the earth unstirred;

The forest firs with glittering snows o’erlaid

Stood like hoar priests in robes of white arrayed.