O magical the winter night! Illusory this stretch
Of unimaginable grays; so shadowy a sketch
Only the fading inks of spirit artistry can etch.

Here is nor dawn nor eventide nor any light we know,
This ghostly incandescence and unearthly afterglow,
This far-spread conflagration of the fields of snow

That pales the clouds, snow-laden, and blanches all the night,
As though in place of moon and stars some spectral satellite
Cast glamor on the earth and floods of violet light.

The wraith-like landscape glimmers, valley, lake and hill,
Unutterably patient! Intolerably still!
No inclination of a leaf nor songster’s trill.

. . . So could one stand an hour, a day, a century,
Breathless . . . What frozen silence! What immobility!
As of some gray unfinished world in age-long reverie.

O whither have you vanished, treading the leaves of fall,
Bright spirit of the summer, leaving the scene in thrall
To silence? To what springtime, far, far beyond recall?

What far retreat of being, what ebbing of the flood
Of life to bless far landscapes anew with leaf and bud
Has left prospect passionless and charmed this stricken wood?

. . .  And yet from depths how distant, that tide of green shall rise,
And that bright spirit come again with April in her eyes,
And winter’s pale prostrations be but phantom memories.

Four hooves rang out and now are still. 
In the dark wall the casements hold 
Essential day above each sill, 
Just light, and colored like thin gold. 
Behind those hooves a drowsy course
All night I rode where hearts were clear, 
And wishes blessed at the source, 
And for no shape of time stop here.

No more to raise that lively ghost
Which ran quicksilver to the bone:
By a whim’s turn the whole was lost
When all its marrow worth was known. 
Ghosts can cast shadows in the breast,
And what was present tears to weep, 
Not heart nor mind would bid from rest
As far as sorrow’s, ten years deep.

I travel, not for a ghost’s sake, 
One step from sleep, and not for one
Left sleeping at my side I wake. 
Before bricks rosy with the dawn,
The hooves will sound beyond the light:
There are dark roads enough to go 
To last us through the end of night, 
And I will make my waking slow,

It was for unconcerning light 
That has not fallen on earth, to stare
An instant only out of night 
And with night’s cloudy character,
Before the laden mind shall slip
Past dream and on to brightmost dream
And fetterless high morning dip
Her two cold sandals in the stream.