The steeple Looks like a thicket of crimson bushes, With here a branch of flame that rushes Darting the belfry boards between; Convulsed and savage flames, they cling, With curves that plant-like curl and lean. Round every joist, round every pulley, And monumental beams, whence ring The bells, that voice forth frenzied folly. His fear and anguish spent, the ringer Sounds his own knell On his ruined bell. A final crash, All dust and plaster in one grey flash, Cleaves the whole steeple's height in pieces; And like some great cry slain, it ceases All on a sudden, the knell's dull rage. The ancient tower Seems sudden to lean and darkly lower; While with heavy thuds, as from stage to stage They headlong bound. The bells are heard Plunging and crashing towards the ground. But yet the old ringer has never stirred. And, scooping the moist earth out, the bell Was thus his coffin, and grave as well. THE SNOW Uninterruptedly falls the snow, Like meagre, long wool-strands, scant and slow, O'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate. Cold with lovelessness, warm with hate. Infinite, infinite falls the snow. Like a moment's time. Monotonously, in a moment's time; On the houses it falls and drops, the snow. Monotonous, whitening them o'er with rime; It falls on the sheds and their palings below. And myriad-wise, it falls and lies In ridgèd waves In the churchyard hollows between the graves. The apron of all inclement weather Is roughly unfastened, there on high; The apron of woes and misery Is shaken by wind-gusts violently Down on the hamlets that crouch together Beneath the dull horizon-sky. The frost creeps down to the very bones, And want creeps in through the walls and stones; Yea, snow and want round the souls creep close, --The heavy snow diaphanous-- Round the stone-cold hearths and the flameless souls That wither away in their huts and holes. The hamlets bare White, white as Death lie yonder, where The crookèd roadways cross and halt; Like branching traceries of salt The trees, all crystallized with frost, Stretch forth their boughs, entwined and crost. Along the ways, as on they go In far procession o'er the snow. Then here and there, some ancient mill, Where light, pale mosses aggregate, Appears on a sudden, standing straight Like a snare upon its lonely hill. The roofs and sheds, down there below. Since November dawned, have been wrestling still, In contrary blasts, with the hurricane; While, thick and full, yet falls amain The infinite snow, with its weary weight, O'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate. Thus journeys the snow afar so fleet. Into every cranny, on every trail; Always the snow and its winding-sheet, The mortuary snow so pale. The snow, unfruitful and so pale. In wild and vagabond tatters hurled Through the limitless winter of the world. THE GRAVE-DIGGER