Mist And Frost

Veil-like and beautiful     Gathered the dutiful     Mist in the night,     True to the messaging,     Dreamful and presaging     Vapour and light.     Ghostly and chill it is,     Pallid and still it is,     Sudden uprist;     What is there tragical,     Moving or magical,     Hid in the mist?     Millions of essences,     Fairy-like presences     Formless as yet;     Light-riven spangles,     Crystalline tangles     Floating unset.     Frost will come shepherding     Nowise enjeoparding     Frondage or flower;     Just a degree of it,     Nought can we see of it     Only its power.     Earth like a Swimmer     Plunged into the dimmer     Wave of the night,     Now is uprisen,     An Elysian vision     Of spray and of light.     'Tis the intangible     Delicate frangible     Secret of mist,     Breathing may banish it,     Thought may evanish it, -     Ponder and whist!     Passionless purity,     Calmness in surety     Dwells everywhere,     A winnowed whiteness,     A lunar lightness     Glows in the air.     But in the heart of it     Every least part of it     Blooms with the charm,     Star-shape and frondage     Broken from bondage     Forged into form.     Crystals encrusted,     Diamonds dusted     Line everything,     Tiny the stencillings     Are as the pencillings     On a moth's wing.     And O, what a wonder!     No farther asunder     Than atoms are laid,     The arches and angles     Of star-froth and spangles     Cast their own shade.     Out from the chalices,     The pigmy palaces     Where the tint hides,     Opal and sapphire     Half-pearl and half-fire     The colour slides;     Till the frail miracle     Rapturous lyrical     Flushes and glows     With a wraith of florescence     That tempers or lessens     The light of the snows.     Held all aquiver, -     But now with a shiver     The power of the sun     Dissolves the laces     Of the tender mazes,     All is undone.     But the old Earth brooding,     All wisdom including,     Affirms and assures     That above the material,     Triumphal imperial     Beauty endures.