The Snow-Storm

Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857–1940)

THE GREAT soft downy snow-storm like a cloak

Descends to wrap the lean world head to feet;

It gives the dead another winding-sheet,

It buries all the roofs until the smoke

Seems like a soul that from its clay has broke.

It broods moon-like upon the Autumn wheat,

And visits all the trees in their retreat

To hood and mantle that poor shivering folk.

With wintry bloom it fills the harshest grooves

In jagged pine-stump fences. Every sound

It hushes to the footstep of a nun.

Sweet Charity! that brightens where it moves

Inducing darkest bits of churlish ground

To give a radiant answer to the sun.