Flowers In Winter: Painted upon a Porte Livre
HOW strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of
flowers,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of
showers!
How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower-sown
home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of bloom!
It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season’s frost and
rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summer-time.
Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy’s age renews its
youth,
And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of present
truth.
A wizard of the Merrimac,—
So old ancestral legends
say,—
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.
The dry logs of the cottage wall,
Beneath his touch, put out
their leaves;
The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
Played round the icy
eaves.
The settler saw his oaken flail
Take bud, and bloom before his
eyes;
From frozen pools he saw the pale,
Sweet summer lilies rise.
To their old homes, by man profaned,
Came the sad dryads, exiled
long,
And through their leafy tongues complained
Of household use and
wrong.
The beechen platter sprouted wild,
The pipkin wore its old-time
green
The cradle o’er the sleeping child
Became a leafy screen.
Haply our gentle friend hath met,
While wandering in her sylvan
quest,
Haunting his native woodlands yet,
That Druid of the West;
And, while the dew on leaf and flower
Glistened in moonlight clear
and still,
Learned the dusk wizard’s spell of power,
And caught his trick of
skill.
But welcome, be it new or old,
The gift which makes the day
more bright,
And paints, upon the ground of cold
And darkness, warmth and
light!
Without is neither gold nor green;
Within, for birds, the
birch-logs sing;
Yet, summer-like, we sit between
The autumn and the spring.
The one, with bridal blush of rose,
And sweetest breath of woodland
balm,
And one whose matron lips unclose
In smiles of saintly calm.
Fill soft and deep, O winter snow!
The sweet azalea’s oaken
dells,
And hide the bank where roses blow,
And swing the azure bells!
O’erlay the amber violet’s leaves,
The purple aster’s brookside
home,
Guard all the flowers her pencil gives
A life beyond their bloom.
And she, when spring comes round again
By greening slope and singing
flood
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain,
Her darlings of the wood.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
