Cofachiqui, and Other Poems/Snow robes
SNOW ROBES.
MURKY clouds were thickly vailingWintry skies, and slowly failingWas the gray light, like a wearyLife, though brief yet cold and dreary.Brown and bare the hills were looming,Dark woods at their feet were glooming.Gloom grew deeper, shadows blendedEarth and sky, though day not ended,And the air was like a boundlessOcean, sullen, sunless, soundless.
From the upper deep descending,Feathery flakes came slowly wending,And their coming ne'er was ceasing,Still their numbers were increasing,Till the dark air caught faint brightnessFrom those crystals' wondrous whiteness.Delicate and wondrous airy,Pure as heaven and light as fairy,Whiter than the lilies blooming,E'en though born from storm-clouds glooming;Millions fall the earth to cover,Thousands o'er the dark stream hover—Vauish then. Did mortals everOn Time's dark and rushing riverEnd a life so brief and stainlessBy a death so pure and painless?
Silence hung deep and unbroken 'Mid the forest arches oaken;Branches hung without vibration,Not the slightest undulation;All devoid of animation;Nature's breast had no pulsation;Through the storm-night long and drearySilent lay, entranced and weary.Seemed the sky above travailingAnd the light from star-eyes failing.
Slowly came at last the dawning,Night and clouds like sable awningSlowly drew their heavy shadowsFrom the forests and the meadows.Sat the day-king crowned with burningOn the golden throne of morning,Flung his gems of ruby gloryThrough the morning air frost-hoary.Oh! 't was wondrous—such celestialBeauty in this dull, terrestrialWorld to see, as had been givenUs a picture here of heaven.And to reproduce that vision,As it seemed, that scene elysian,Every color of the painterWould be duller, colder, fainter,Than the light on wintry ocean'Mid the tempest's black commotion.For the seer's imaginationOr the poet's inspirationNe'er conceived or told the storyOf such purity and glory; For each shrub and trailing bramble,Vines that 'mong the broad limbs ramble,All the twigs and branches bending,Every brown leaf thence depending,And the brown hills rising steeply,All were wrapped entirely, deeply,In a mantle purer, fairerThan e'er wore the human wearer.Seemed the forests' mural edgesAnd the hills' steep, rocky ledgesLike the gleaming, awful whitenessOf the "great white throne" of brightness.Those white robes so dazzling splendid,Wrapped o'er all the branches bended,Were, through all their meshes, spangledWith the sunlight they entangled.
But alas! of short durationWas the trees' transfiguration.Came the south wind 'round them wooing,With its wanton hands undoingAll the icy clasps 't were bindingThose white mantles 'round them winding,And they, doffing their bright dress,Stood as erst in nakedness.