A chill sad ending of a dreary day. The waning light in stillness dies away. Bequeaths no ray of hope the void to fill But lends to gloomy thoughts more sadness still. All nature hushed beneath a snowy shroud Darkness and death their sovereign rule decree O, reign of dread, of cruel blasts that kill Thy cycle brings a heavy heart to me. How many thus their Winter’s advent view Whose darkened faith no daylight ever knew. Alas for him who thinks the grave his doom Or sees the sun go down behind the tomb. “Seek and ye shall find”. On every hand Mute prophecies their mission tell. Yield but a listening ear and they shall say ‘The dead but sleep, they do not pass away’ Else why mid earth and heaven on yonder tree That type of life in death, the living tomb? Why the imago from dark cerements free Winging its upward flight from earthly gloom? Why this device supreme unless a prophecy Of resurrected life and immortality. Oh thou whose downcast eyes refuse to seek See! even at the grave the sign is given. The snow-clad evergreen, eternal life Clothed in celestial purity from heaven. Even thus life’s Winter should be blest Not dark and dead but full of peace and rest. ] Silently, like thoughts that come and go, the snow-flakes fall, each one a gem. The whitened air conceals all earthly trace, and leaves to memory the space to fill. I look upon a blank, whereon my fancy paints, as could no hand of mine, the pictures and the poems of a boyhood life; and even as the undertone of a painting, be it warm or cool, shall modify or change the color laid upon it, so this cold and frosty background through the window transfigures all my thoughts, and forms them into winter memories legion like the snow. Oh that I could translate for other eyes the winter idyl painted there! I see a living past whose counterpart I well could wish might be a common fortune. I see in all its joyous phases the gladsome winter in New England, the snow-clad hills with bare and shivering trees, the homestead dear, the old gray barn hemmed in with peaked drifts. I see the skating-pond, and hear the ringing, intermingled shouts of the noisy, shuffling game, the black ice written full with testimony of the winter’s brisk hilarity. Down the hard-packed road with glancing sled I speed, past frightened team and startled way-side groups; o’er “thank you, marms,” I fly in clear mid-air, and crouching low, with sidelong spurts of snowy spray, I sweep the sliding curve. Now past the village church and cosy parsonage. Now scudding close beneath the hemlocks, hanging low with their piled and tufted weight of snow. The way-side bits like dizzy streaks whiz by, the old rail fence becomes a quivering tint of gray. The road-side weeds bow after me, and in the swirling eddy chasing close upon my feet, sway to and fro.