Winter with the Gulf Stream

The boughs, the boughs are bare enough

But earth has never felt the snow.

Frost-furred our ivies are and rough

With bills of rime the brambles shew.

The hoarse leaves crawl on hissing ground

Because the sighing wind is low.

But if the rain-blasts be unbound

And from dank feathers wring the drops

The clogged brook runs with choking sound

Kneading the mounded mire that stops

His channel under clammy coats

Of foliage fallen in the copse.

A simple passage of weak notes

Is all the winter bird dare try.

The bugle moon by daylight floats

So glassy white about the sky,

So like a berg of hyaline,

And pencilled blue so daintily

I never saw her so divine.

But through black branches, rarely drest

In scarves of silky shot and shine,

The webbed and the watery west

Where yonder crimson fireball sits

Looks laid for feasting and for rest.

I see long reefs of violets

In beryl-covered fens so dim,

A gold-water Pactolus frets

Its brindled wharves and yellow brim,

The waxen colours weep and run,

And slendering to his burning rim

Into the flat blue mist the sun

Drops out and all our day is done.