Late Snow

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling,     Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges     That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences,     Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.     Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted     The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air;     They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits,     Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.     Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled,     Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding,     But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland     Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.     O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows,     And lovely the film of falling flakes; so wayward and slack;     But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings,     Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.