Like a careless child in the drifts it stood Against the darkness of the wood, Even the path was not cut through Up to the door it led you to. Beauty untarnished, but never a sound Save for the whispering trees around. Its shining eyes on the cold world shone Warm and bright from its snowy comb. Cheer was the word the blue fume wrote As it cleared itself from the chimney’s throat. The drifts that lay on the tent like sheds Were like the covers of untouched beds. A great white garment of snow and frost Was laid on the fence, but the hedge was lost. A-while away the home garden park Divides itself from the woods soft dark. Dear God I said, you had meant to please When giving man such gifts as these.
I did not always know ’twas kind Of thee to let me pass, And with my sacrilegious feet Walk lightly thru thy grass.
How could I know, when I was young ’Twas one of thine own dreams, To tender me the license of Thy hills and singing streams.
How could’st thou take even a part Of thy remotest time, And weld me, poor unworthly link, Into this chain of thine.
One day I learned at cost of pain Among the shadows dim, Thy gift of violets, Oh! God Their fragrance cutting in.
I set apart one hallowed day Forever dear to me. Because thou taughtest me to love A flowering apple tree.
And since I’ve older grown and drawn To solitudes apart, I find I cannot tell the Lord All that is in my heart.
Then I go on from here I’ll take The ever pleasant memory of a lake. I’ll tightly lock within my spirit breast The picture of a grim old mountain’s crest.
A little stream’s song running ever clear And all the lonely places I hold dear. A mocking bird, a drenched and dripping tree. O! I shall keep my hunger for the sea.
I shall keep my knowledge of the paths I know The gates of many mornings and the glow, Of sunset, on a firegold window pane, The mist on young nasturtiums after rain.
Virginia creeper on some quaint old garden wall The sound of dropping nuts, I’ll take them all. The falling leaves, the closing of the year, I’ll not forget, tho’ I go on from here.
These tho’ts I shall retain (e’en past the gates of death), Of burnished autumn leaves, a tiny baby’s breath. In my heart I’ll take the Heaven’s most untried height A moon drowned flower, from some star riven night.
