Frost-Flowers.

Over my window in pencillings white,     Stealthily traced in the silence of night -     Traced with a pencil as viewless as air,     By an artist unseen, when the star-beams were fair,     Came wonderful pictures, so life-like and true     That I'm filled with amaze as the marvel I view.         Like, and yet unlike the things I have seen, -     Feathery ferns in the forest-depths green,     Delicate mosses that hide from the light,     Snow-drops, and lilies, and hyacinths white,     Fringes, and feathers, and half-opened flowers,     Closely-twined branches of dim, cedar bowers -     Strange, that one hand should so deftly combine     Such numberless charms in so quaint a design!         O wondrous creations of silence and night!     I watch as ye fade in the clear morning light, -     As ye melt into tear-drops and trickle away     From the keen, searching eyes of inquisitive Day.     While I gaze ye are gone, and I see you depart     With a wistful regret lying deep in my heart, -     A longing for something that will not decay,     Or melt like these frost-flowers in tear-drops away, -     A passionate yearning of heart for that shore     Where beauty unfading shall last evermore;     Nor, e'en as we gaze, from our vision be lost     Like the beautiful things that are pencilled in frost!