Lifeless, still, in the frosty air
The old stone houses round the square
Look out upon grey lawns whose grass
Is frozen to brittle blades of steel or glass;
And on black beds through whose ice-welded crust,
Hollow and hard, no gardener’s spade can thrust;
And on black branches that forget to grow
And hang benumbed and hypnotized as though
The sap stood still. The very air seems dead,
All sound dried out of it. No ringing tread
Warms the numbed silence. Even the sun himself,
An orange disk in a grey frost-laden sky,
Hangs lightless, like a plate upon a shelf.
This is not life. Some ghost of otherwhere
Takes shadowy substance from the frozen air
To hover briefly till the spell is broken,—
A dream, a passing thought, a faint word spoken.
But suddenly from a corner of the square
A shimmering fount of sound leaps clear and rare,
A small, thin, frosty cheer like tinkling glass.
Is it shouts of boys that pass
Running in file to slide on the icy kerb,
Or Dryad, sick for spring,
Wailing forlornly under the frozen herb?
O light of youth, O flower of life in death!
We listen with bated breath;
So sad, so clear the delicate, wistful spell;
Till frost lays hold on the sound and all is still.