Fireside musings

Under the Snow

It is pleasant to think, just under the snow,

That stretches so bleak and blank and cold,

Are beauty and warmth that we cannot know,-

Green fields and leaves and blossoms of gold.

Yes, under this frozen and dumb expanse,

Ungladdened by bee or bird or flower,

A world where the leaping fountains glance,

And the buds expand, is waiting its hour.

And often now when the skies are wild,

And hoarse and sullen the night winds blow,

And lanes and hollows with drifts are piled,

I think of the violets under the snow;

I look in the wild-flower's tremulous eye,

I hear the chirp of the ground bird brown;

A breath from the budding grove steals by,

And the swallows are dipping above the town.

So there, from the outer sense concealed,

it lies, shut in by a veil of snow;

But there, to the inward eye revealed,

Are boughs that blossom, and flowers that glow.

The lily shines on its bending stem,

The crocus opens its April gold,

And the rose up-tosses its diadem

Against the floor of the winter's cold.

                                               T. Hempstead