THROUGH a dumb-shifting veil of snow I mark the trees. The chestnuts bare, That reach black fingers up the air; The beeches where, high branch and low, The leaves still hang in russet ranks; The oaks, whose leaves are scanter, more Phantasmal-brown, mere ghosts of yore; The elms, of shapelier tops and flanks. And then the pines; sole guests in green The winter does vouchsafe; they stand Sedately, dropping from their hand The pungent cones; dark, dark, I ween, Their thoughts, and deep and manifold. The winter grass seems doubly sere Beneath their vital boughs that fear No frost, that changeless front the cold. These stately creatures all I view As through an opal dimly; then, Illimitable, mute to men, Above, a sky of hodden gray That lures the eye past every tree, Into a tranced immensity. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LINES TO WILLIAM LINLEY WHILE HE SANG A SONG TO PURCELL'S MUSIC by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE THE LIGHT THAT LIES by THOMAS MOORE IN MY LADY'S PRAISE by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE THE ULTIMATE by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON TO THYRZA (2) by GEORGE GORDON BYRON THE LARCH GROVE by DAVID HARTLEY COLERIDGE |