Winter / Raymond Holden

Winter

Drowsily, dreamily, the brown boughs
Mingle and murmur in the breeze
And the little animals drowse
And I wonder they do not freeze,
For nothing moves but is shrill
With the Winter s clinking song
And the snow lies deep and the hill
Gleams where the gusts are strong.
I have come down from the house
Which rests on the reaching snow
To the music of murmuring boughs
In the footless world I know,
And to me the cold is a voice
From earth that would speak to me
And urge me not to rejoice
That I am not beast nor tree;
And to me the warmth of my blood
Is an answer saying, "I hear,"
And so we are understood
And so we have nothing to fear
Though I am a man who dies
And the earth is like dust in the skies.

~~

Raymond Holden (1894-1972)

from Granite and Alabaster, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]

Raymond Holden biography