John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Poems of NatureFlowers in Winter
H
In graceful counterfeit of flowers,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!
The pictures of its flower-sown home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of bloom!
To the dark season’s frost and rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summer-time.
Our fancy’s age renews its youth,
And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of present truth.
So old ancestral legends say,—
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.
Beneath his touch, put out their leaves;
The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
Played round the icy eaves.
Take bud, and bloom before his eyes;
From frozen pools he saw the pale,
Sweet summer lilies rise.
Came the sad dryads, exiled long,
And through their leafy tongues complained
Of household use and wrong.
The pipkin wore its old-time green
The cradle o’er the sleeping child
Became a leafy screen.
While wandering in her sylvan quest,
Haunting his native woodlands yet,
That Druid of the West;
Glistened in moonlight clear and still,
Learned the dusk wizard’s spell of power,
And caught his trick of skill.
The gift which makes the day more bright,
And paints, upon the ground of cold
And darkness, warmth and light!
Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing;
Yet, summer-like, we sit between
The autumn and the spring.
And sweetest breath of woodland balm,
And one whose matron lips unclose
In smiles of saintly calm.
The sweet azalea’s oaken dells,
And hide the bank where roses blow,
And swing the azure bells!
The purple aster’s brookside home,
Guard all the flowers her pencil gives
A life beyond their bloom.
By greening slope and singing flood
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain,
Her darlings of the wood.