Into my heart the wind moans,

  Into my heart to-night.

Over the chimney sifts the snow,

  Over the sky the light.

Into my heart the year moans,

  Into my heart the dream,

Of the shrivelled world, the iron frost,

  The manacled waste and stream.

Into my heart the past moans,

  And the dead return to-night;

As over the chimney drifts the snow,

  Over the sky the light.

Give me the hills and the woodlands,

  Give me the wave and the wind,

Where the doors, eternal, of fancy

  Are open forever behind;—

Where the haunting windows of memory

  Know no curtain or blind.

Give me that world of the spirit,

  Not bounded by custom or stone;—

Where the iron grief of the ocean

  For the shore, is the only moan;—

Where the laugh of the wind in the forest

  To the silences; never is flown.

Snow, white snow, beautiful robing of snow,

  Under the ancient peace of the wise old trees;

Shroud of beauty, wound of the winds that blow,

  Marbling all love’s death in a dream-like frieze.

Soft, and white, and pure, and true, you lie,

  By field and hill; Love’s magic mantle thrown

Over the mighty ruin of wood and sky,

  And wild bleak waste, and hush of the year’s mad moan.

Like to the pure and perfect spirit of Greece,

  Under these dim, majestic, gothic aisles;

When out of the azure quarries of night’s wide peace,

  The Master Artist reareth His Parian piles.

I came by austere ways of your beauty this morn,

  When the lanthorn sun looked dim through his frosty glass;—

And knew that glorious, Attic dream re-born,

  And that rapt art, Athene, of Phidias.

Deep underneath her mantle bleak,

  Nature, the Titan, lies;

Her limbs are numb,

Her voices dumb,

  And closed her sleep-filled eyes.

One arctic hush enwraps in gloom

  The lonely northern land;

And grim

    And dim,

And hushed in death,

  Her lakes and rivers stand.

But not eternal is Love’s death,

  And not forever blind,

And numb,

    And dumb;

Her streams shall flow,

  Her cerements unwind.

Down through the desolate forest deeps,

  The Spring shall flush again;

Earth’s bugles blow,

Her ice and snow

  Melt into wind and rain.

And life and youth will once more stir,

  And soar to azure dream;

And all earth’s urn,

Of age, outburn

  In one long red sunbeam.

For Nature knows not death, though bleak,

  She sleeps in shrouded snows;—

Love wakes and whispers,

The dull ear of earth

Listens and yearns,

  And lo, her crocus blows.

Over the wood the sun burns,

  Over the wood and the snow;

As southward and sunward the year turns,

  Glad in its azure glow.

Under the winter my heart sings,

  Under the chill and the snow;

As forth on my fancy my heart wings

  To the days of laughter and glow.

Thou, O my soul,

Thou art as an eagle

Caged in this agonized

  Iron of earth’s gloom;

Evermore beating

At these confining,

Effort-confounding,

  Bars of thy doom.

Evermore chafing,

Restless and longing,

For those far rose-peaks,

  Splendid, of light;—

That large sky-vista,

That unfettered freedom,

  Wide for thy flight.

Here thou art caged,

Thy hooded eye darkened,

Thy soaring wings wounded,

  Thy splendor curbed fast;

That somewhere and sometime,

Erstwhile enfranchised,

Met the red sunlance,

  Measured the vast.

Here in thy prison

Of fettered contumely,

Environ ignoble,

  All high effort wronging;

Thou canst never soar to

Those vasts of the sunlit,

  Far heights of thy longing.

But, thou, O my soul,

Out of these cage-bars,

Forth to thy freedom,

  Unshackled, alone,

Thou wilt go outward,

Skyward and sunward,

Vastward and strengthward,

  Back to thine own.

Where on those far-peaks,

Thou with thy kindred,

Kinglike and soaring,

  Eyeing the sun;

Thou wilt drink deep of that

Vastness and glory,

  Where sky-winds run.

Forgetting this life-curbed,

Prisoned, flesh-shackled,

Earth-enmanacled

  Thing that thou wast;—

There in thine eyrie,

Thou wilt regain thee

All thou hast longed for,

  All thou hast lost.

Once more, once more, the agéd year

  Goes sadly to the tomb;

With sighing bough

All leafless now,

  He fades into the gloom;—

We would not, heedless, call him back;

Nor have him stretch his haggard woes,

                 anew, on life’s rough rack.

In kindlier days of leaf and sun,

  He spake us strong and true;

With sap in rind,

  And sunny wind,

He laughed at heaven’s blue;—

Now gone with all old dreams that go,

We would not hold his tottering steps,

                 or stay his passing woe.

He’s gone; we could not call him now;

  Though summer’s gladsome voice,

And blithesome Spring,

With leaf and wing,

  Bade his old heart rejoice;—

He would not hear our voice, for he,

All hilled in snows, doth sleep

                 ’mid death’s tranquility.