Suddenly the snow is falling fast: Slow the lovely speed, All the air being full with fulness cast On the mounded world ... And the firmamental snow will give no heed, Nor the snow terrestrial have a care For anything its heavy deluge hides, For anything upcurled In its mountain-hug, nor what abides Imprisoned deep of the imprisoning air. Peter of Alcantara, how wide And untrodden quite Swells the sudden snow on every side, Speckled with no sign, One in uncontrollable and fearful white! . . . . Swiftly, as it came, its mood is changed ... Now it drifts a white flame of caress, As if it took design, Learnt a new art of its loveliness, And in a cave above the Saint is ranged. Hour on hour the world is flooded bright With fair agency, In continuance a sleep, of might To lay death athwart Any bosom, any limbs that cannot flee: Yet safely housed the holy traveller waits, Though in that white storm caught; For the deep snow of earth its snow abates Before a force of deeper chastity. Little flakes, that touch with feet like birds, Touch him not at all, But lie convex in a wave that curds, Bowed upon its vault, Stooping on him almost won to fall, Yet in strength withheld, whole in its love, As a virgin praying for a priest: So in its lovely halt, So aloof from sense, it rears above The saint its covert, not a flake released. PROPHET Blessed with joy, as daybreak under cloud-- Tender light of youth in the old face-- Blessed with joy beneath the weight and shroud Of the years before this day of Grace, Simeon blesses God and praises Him, As a little child and mother slim With first girlhood come their way Toward his face, and night becometh day. Prophet, joy for thee and for thy land! Wide the welcome and the peace of joy! But he takes the infant on his hand, Graciously receives the milking boy From the mother’s bosom, from her heart, While she stands in reverence apart. Lo, the old man’s countenance, In a wave of anguish breaks from trance! All the features lift with power, and sink, As if sudden earthquake heaved and rolled Through them, from a sudden thought they think. Can a child of but a few weeks old So confuse with terror an old man? Yea, this child, laid on his fingers’ span, Is for the ruin or the rise Of the generations, Simeon cries. Yea, a child, a tender handful, sleek As a pearl--and the dire earthquake’s power In his little body set, to wreak Dread requital on the souls that cower Mad with desolation, naked, lost, Or uplifted wild from a dead host: For the rise and ruin set Of so many--but not yet, not yet!