A Winter Picture / Ethelwyn Wetherald

       
A Winter Picture

An air as sharp as steel, a sky
      Pierced with a million points of fire;
The level fields, hard, white and dry,
      A road as straight and tense as wire.

No hint of human voice or face
      In frost below or fire above,
Save where the smoke’s blue billowing grace
      Flies flag-like from the roofs of love.

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Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from The Last Robin, 1907

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States and the European Union]

Ethelwy Wetherald biography