Winter Gale

It froze the field

and felled tall trees,

It bred black ice

and bruised blue boulders,

It ensnared trout in streams,

bade them sleep for a season,

It dropped birds from the air

and broke bottles on door-steps.

Day’s disc became pale,

and the dark arrived early;

The ground was as iron,

and the grass grey and sere.

Leaves fell en masse

from lofty boughs,

Blackened at once,

to be borne on bare earth.

Songbirds fell silent,

turned to stone in their sorrows,

Boulders cracked

and boughs exploded.

Wolves cried out

on a wasted day,

Honey-pawed hooded-ones

hid in their hollows.

The beam roved about

with a booming roar,

One way and another

over wide-bosomed Earth;

It infiltered in furrows of frozen soil,

Overturned in an instant,

and tipped with rime.