<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="" class="head">The Treasures of the Snow</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">LOVE you the sun's gaze on the brow of Winder,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Toning the world to the faery voice of Spring?</p><p class="line">Love you the storm-rack riding o'er him ghostly,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">While rush the streamlets, madly bickering?</p><p class="line">Fairer I ween is the dower of hornèd Winter;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Joy-shafts keener than arrows he can throw;</p><p class="line">Lovelier his tresses than all the wealth of Summer:</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Say, have you seen the treasures of the snow?</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Silently and softly, tender and caressing,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">(Soft as the down that lines the linnet's nest:</p><p class="line">Silent as the Music that soothes the ear of Fancy:</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Tender as the wind's love, sighing from the West!)</p><p class="line">Embodied smiles from the white sky falling,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Come the white flakes in airy revelry,</p><p class="line">Over the whole earth swiftly, surely weaving</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">One rare carpet of delight for me.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Run, little burn, fast flying from your lover</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Strong and importunate to make you his own:</p><p class="line">Rapidly, oh rapidly, else he will detain you,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Grip you, and embrace you, and kiss you all to stone!</p><p class="line">Ah! fantastical glory 'mid the branches:</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Frost wed to snowflake: masonry sublime:</p><p class="line">Beauty death-dealing, pitiless and lovely,--</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Sure, the fair effulgence of an angel's crime!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">So sings the heart, as we glide adown the valleys,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Borrowing wings from the glittering below,</p><p class="line">Careless of all things, save the world around us,--</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">World of white palaces and kingdoms of the snow:</p><p class="line">Wanton, ye gods. In the cloudy space of Heaven!</p><p class="line"><em>We</em> are as free, and we choir as free a song.</p><p class="line">Flying?--<em>We</em> fly, as to heights unmeasur'd soaring:</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">This is no Earth, that is sweeping us along.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Pleasure, says the Bard, is as fleeting as the snowflake:</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Fleeting as pleasure is the glory of the snow:</p><p class="line">Fades the fair shroud that has hush'd the earth to wonder,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Soon, soon evanishing the earth below.</p><p class="line">What if the dank rain patters down to ruin,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Printing me the lesson that Beauty may not last?</p><p class="line">Is the snow lost in the wilderness of dead things?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Nay, for I glean'd its treasure as it pass'd.</p></div><p><em>February</em>, 1912.</p></body></html> · Great War