Songs of the Winter Days

The sky has turned its heart away,

The earth its sorrow found;

The daisies turn from childhood's play,

And creep into the ground.

The earth is black and cold and hard;

Thin films of dry white ice,

Across the rugged wheel-tracks barred,

The children's feet entice.

Dark flows the stream, as if it mourned

The winter in the land;

With idle icicles adorned,

That mill-wheel soon will stand.

But, friends, to say 'tis cold, and part,

Is to let in the cold;

We'll make a summer of the heart,

And laugh at winter old.

With vague dead gleam the morning white

Comes through the window-panes;

The clouds have fallen all the night,

Without the noise of rains.

As of departing, unseen ghost,

Footprints go from the door;

The man himself must long be lost

Who left those footprints hoar!

Yet follow thou; tread down the snow;

Leave all the road behind;

Heed not the winds that steely blow,

Heed not the sky unkind;

For though the glittering air grow dark,

The snow will shine till morn;

And long ere then one dear home-spark

Will winter laugh to scorn.

Oh wildly wild the roaring blast

Torments the fallen snow!

The wintry storms are up at last,

And care not how they go!

A spectral ocean lies outside,

Torn by a tempest dark;

Its ghostly billows, dim descried,

Leap on my stranded bark.

A morning clear, with frosty light

From sunbeams late and low;

They shine upon the snow so white,

And shine back from the snow.

And when the bright sad sun is low

Behind the mountain-dome,

A twilight wind will come and blow

Around the children's home,

And puff and waft the powdery snow,

As feet unseen did pass;

While, waiting in its bed below,

Green lies the summer grass. 

                                                          ~George Macdonald