Snow / Madison Cawein

         
Snow

The moon, like a round device
On a shadowy shield of war,
Hangs white in a heaven of ice
With a solitary star.

The wind has sunk to a sigh,
And the waters are stern with frost;
And gray, in the eastern sky,
The last snow-cloud is lost.

White fields, that are winter-starved,
Black woods, that are winter-fraught,
Cold, harsh as a face death-carved,
With the iron of some black thought.

---
Madison Cawein (1865-1914)
from The Garden of Dreams, 1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

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