O snow! flying hither And hurrying thither, Here, there, through the air,--you never care whither,-- Do you see me here sitting, A-knitting, a-knitting, And wishing myself with you breezily flitting, Like any wild elf? Mother sits there a-rocking, And watches my stocking; Well, I know I am slow, and she thinks it is shocking: While Lizzie and Sally, They twit me, and rally,-- My thoughts, half asleep, chase your flakes to the valley, A drowsy white heap. Dear Sally and Lizzie, My sisters so busy, In and out, all about, you make my head dizzy; You hasten, you flutter, You spin, you churn butter, You sew the long seams; while I cannot utter One word of my dreams. Lo! light as a feather, The merry flakes gather In rifts and in drifts, glad enough of cold weather; Gay throngs interlacing, On the slant roofs embracing, They slip and they fall! down, down they are racing, I after them all! One large flake advances; 'Tis a white steed that prances; At the bits as he flits, how he foams, like my fancies! Up softly I sidle From where I sit idle,-- I snatch, as it flies, at the gossamer bridle,-- I'm mounted, I rise! Away we are bounding, No hoof-note resounding, Still as light is our flight through the armies surrounding; No murmur, no rustling, Though millions are jostling; A host is in camp, but you heard neither bustling Nor bugle, nor tramp. Yet the truce-flag is lifted; Unfurled it lies drifted Over hill, over rill, where its snow could be sifted; And now I'm returning To parley concerning The beautiful cause that awakened my yearning,-- The trouble that was. Ho! ho! a swift fairy,-- A pearl-shallop airy! I am caught, quick as thought! fleece-muffled and hairy, Her grim boatman tightens His grasp, till it frightens Me, half, as we sail to the east where it brightens, On waves of the gale. White, dimpled, and winning, The fairy sits spinning, From her hair, floating fair, coils of cable beginning, Her shallop to tether In stress of bleak weather, While the boatman and I, wrapped in ermine together, Drift on through the sky. Stay! the boat is upsetting! My fairy, forgetting Her coil and her toil, to escape from a wetting Has now the one notion: Below boils the ocean! I scream,--I am heard,--up, in arrowy motion, I'm borne by a bird,--