The Fairy in Winter
(For a drawing by Dorothy Puvis Lathrop)
There was a Fairy-flake of winter —
Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence,
Sister crystal to crystal sighing,
Making of meadow argent palace,
Night a star-sown solitude,
Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, 'I burn here!'
Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,
Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,
Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow —
Green as stalks of weeds in water —
Breathed: stirred.
Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing,
Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic.
Softlier than moth's her pinions trembled;
Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered,
Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken.
In air, o'er crystal, rang twangling night-wind.
Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament.
~~
Walter de la Mare
From The Veil, and other poems, 1913
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Walter de la Mare biography
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