Winter / Charles R. Murphy

Winter

Now are ye lean, O trees, and shaped for soaring
  Over the sacred snow that hides the land;
Now after stress of bitter storms endured
  On the spent earth unmutinous ye stand.

Only your faces now are turned not earthward,  
  However deep your roots are clasped there.
With the gaunt gesture of a saint’s uprising,
  Ye are the resurrection that is prayer.

~~
Charles R. Murphy (1864-1936)
from Poetry, August 1921

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

Charles R. Murphy biography