Vines furred with the frost String from the wall: Their bones recall Summer leaves long lost, Cricket and fly and bee And their low melody. No bird wails to the waste Of scentless snow, Where streaming low The steel-blue shadows haste; But through the hard night The dead moon takes flight The Winter Harvest Between the blackened curbs lie stacked the harvest of the skies, Long lines of frozen, grimy cocks befouled by city feet; On either side the racing throngs, the crowding cliffs, the cries, And ceaseless winds that eddy down to whip the iron street. The wagons whine beneath their loads, the raw-boned horses strain; A hundred sullen shovels claw and heave the sodden mass-- There lifts no dust of scented moats, no cheery call of swain, Nor birds that pipe from border brush across the yellow grass. No cow-bells honk from upland fields, no sunset thrushes call To swarthy, bare-limbed harvesters beyond the stubble roads; But flanges grind on frosted steel, the weary snow-picks fall, And twisted, toiling backs are bent to pile the bitter loads. No shouting from the intervales, no singing from the hill, No scent of trodden tansy weeds among the golden grain----, Only the silent, cringing forms beneath the aching chill. Only the hungry eyes of want in haggard cheeks of pain. Flowers of the Sky The snow was four feet deep beyond my door. (I never knew the cold so cruel before.) The frost was white as death, and in the wood Shattered the aching aisles of solitude. Here lay the winter wrapped about with gloom; But overhead God's flowers were in bloom! At dawn, above the ink-black trunks and night, A pale pink petal drifted with the light; And presently the gates of sun swung wide, And through them flowed a crimson, scented tide: Roses that bloomed and bloomed again and died, Staining the lonely hills on either side. And scarce were God's fields swept of this warm glow, When purest gold fell softly to the snow-- Petals of gold from where there rolled on high A sea of tulips lapping all the sky. The blossoms clung so close I could not see One nook of empty blue where more could be. Snow and the winds that eat into the bone, Here where the sun lies cold and waters moan. God's pastures still are bearing for His feet A million purple blooms all dewy sweet: Violets and asters, hyacinths and phlox, And streaming shafts of starry hollyhocks. Late in the day when I crawled up the hills, Dogged by the cold that tortures ere it kills; I needs must stand and stare beyond the rim, And watch the garden once more laid for Him; Until the moon's great dripping calyx came, And all the myriad star-buds burst in flame.