Winter Landscape
The three men coming down the winter hill
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Returning cold and silent to their town,
Returning to the drifted snow, the rink
Lively with children, to the older men,
The long companions they can never reach,
The blue light, men with ladders, by the church
The sledge and shadow in the twilit street,
Are not aware that in the sandy time
To come, the evil waste of history
Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow
Of that same hill: when all their company
Will have been irrecoverably lost,
These men, this particular three in brown
Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say
By their configuration with the trees,
The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,
What place, what time, what morning occasion
Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds
At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,
Thence to return as now we see them and
Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill
Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.
Related poetry:
- ARCADIAN WINTER WOE is me to tell it thee, Winter winds in Arcady! Scattered is thy flock and fled From the glades where once it fed, And the snow lies drifted white In the bower of our delight, Where the beech threw gracious shade On the cheek of boy and maid: And the bitter blasts make roar […]...
- Winter Song Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Will the Summer come again? Rain on houses, on the street, Wetting all the people’s feet, Though they run with might and main. Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow. Will the Winter never go? What do beggar children do With […]...
- A Winter Eden A winter garden in an alder swamp, Where conies now come out to sun and romp, As near a paradise as it can be And not melt snow or start a dormant tree. It lifts existence on a plane of snow One level higher than the earth below, One level nearer heaven overhead, And last […]...
- The Winter's Spring The winter comes; I walk alone, I want no bird to sing; To those who keep their hearts their own The winter is the spring. No flowers to please-no bees to hum- The coming spring’s already come. I never want the Christmas rose To come before its time; The seasons, each as God bestows, Are […]...
- Winter Sleep When against earth a wooden heel Clicks as loud as stone on steel, When stone turns flour instead of flakes, And frost bakes clay as fire bakes, When the hard-bitten fields at last Crack like iron flawed in the cast, When the world is wicked and cross and old, I long to be quit of […]...
- The Angle of a Landscape The Angle of a Landscape That every time I wake Between my Curtain and the Wall Upon an ample Crack Like a Venetian waiting Accosts my open eye Is just a Bough of Apples Held slanting, in the Sky The Pattern of a Chimney The Forehead of a Hill Sometimes a Vane’s Forefinger But that’s […]...
- On Winter's Margin On winter’s margin, see the small birds now With half-forged memories come flocking home To gardens famous for their charity. The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins Hang at the entrance to the silent wood. With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs; By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing Like […]...
- Winter Song The browns, the olives, and the yellows died, And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide, And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed, Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed. From off your face, into the winds of winter, The sun-brown and […]...
- Winter in the Country Sweet life! how lovely to be here And feel the soft sea-laden breeze Strike my flushed face, the spruce’s fair Free limbs to see, the lesser trees’ Bare hands to touch, the sparrow’s cheep To heed, and watch his nimble flight Above the short brown grass asleep. Love glorious in his friendly might, Music that […]...
- February: The Boy Breughel The birches stand in their beggar’s row: Each poor tree Has had its wrists nearly Torn from the clear sleeves of bone, These icy trees Are hanging by their thumbs Under a sun That will begin to heal them soon, Each will climb out Of its own blue, oval mouth; The river groans, Two birds […]...
- The Winter Scene I The rutted roads are all like iron; skies Are keen and brilliant; only the oak-leaves cling In the bare woods, or the hardy bitter-sweet; Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on; And all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick, Or in the twilight cracks with […]...
- A Winter's Tale Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow, And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge; Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge. I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky; But she’s waiting, […]...
- Against Winter The truth is dark under your eyelids. What are you going to do about it? The birds are silent; there’s no one to ask. All day long you’ll squint at the gray sky. When the wind blows you’ll shiver like straw. A meek little lamb you grew your wool Till they came after you with […]...
- After the Winter Some day, when trees have shed their leaves And against the morning’s white The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night, We’ll turn our faces southward, love, Toward the summer isle Where bamboos spire to shafted grove And wide-mouthed orchids smile. And we will seek the quiet hill Where towers the cotton […]...
- A Winter Day I The air is silent save where stirs A bugling breeze among the firs; The virgin world in white array Waits for the bridegroom kiss of day; All heaven blooms rarely in the east Where skies are silvery and fleeced, And o’er the orient hills made glad The morning comes in wonder clad; Oh, ’tis […]...
- Winter Milk THE MILK drops on your chin, Helga, Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your cheeks Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes. Let your mammy keep hands off the chin. This is a high holy spatter of white on the reds and blues. Before the bottle was taken away, Before you so […]...
- Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
- The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
- Redbud Trail – Winter It’s two muddy miles from Highway 20, Just past the north fork of Cache Creek, Across the broad meadow, through Blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge, And back down to the creek bank, The crossing point, me striding with Mud caking my old hiking boots. For a millennia the Miwok people walked These […]...
- Winter A wrinkled crabbed man they picture thee, Old Winter, with a rugged beard as grey As the long moss upon the apple-tree; Blue-lipt, an icedrop at thy sharp blue nose, Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows. They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth, Old […]...
- 15. Winter: A Dirge THE WINTRY west extends his blast, And hail and rain does blaw; Or the stormy north sends driving forth The blinding sleet and snaw: While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down, And roars frae bank to brae; And bird and beast in covert rest, And pass the heartless day. “The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,” […]...
- Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs […]...
- Ode to Winter When first the fiery-mantled sun His heavenly race begun to run; Round the earth and ocean blue, His children four the Seasons flew. First, in green apparel dancing, The young Spring smiled with angel grace; Rosy summer next advancing, Rushed into her sire’s embrace:- Her blue-haired sire, who bade her keep For ever nearest to […]...
- Winter Trees All the complicated details Of the attiring and The disattiring are completed! A liquid moon Moves gently among The long branches. Thus having prepared their buds Against a sure winter The wise trees Stand sleeping in the cold....
- An Old Man's Winter Night All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to […]...
- Picture-Books in Winter Summer fading, winter comes Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs, Window robins, winter rooks, And the picture story-books. Water now is turned to stone Nurse and I can walk upon; Still we find the flowing brooks In the picture story-books. All the pretty things put by, Wait upon the children’s eye, Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks, […]...
- Eden in Winter [Supposed to be chanted to some rude instrument at a modern fireplace] Chant we the story now Tho’ in a house we sleep; Tho’ by a hearth of coals Vigil to-night we keep. Chant we the story now, Of the vague love we knew When I from out the sea Rose to the feet of […]...
- 220. Song-The Winter it is Past THE WINTER it is past, and the summer comes at last And the small birds, they sing on ev’ry tree; Now ev’ry thing is glad, while I am very sad, Since my true love is parted from me. The rose upon the breer, by the waters running clear, May have charms for the linnet or […]...
- Blue Winter Winter uses all the blues there are. One shade of blue for water, one for ice, Another blue for shadows over snow. The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice- Both different blues. And hills row after row Are colored blue according to how for. You know the bluejay’s double-blur device Shows best when there […]...
- Woods in Winter When winter winds are piercing chill, And through the hawthorn blows the gale, With solemn feet I tread the hill, That overbrows the lonely vale. O’er the bare upland, and away Through the long reach of desert woods, The embracing sunbeams chastely play, And gladden these deep solitudes. Where, twisted round the barren oak, The […]...
- Lines For Winter Tell yourself As it gets cold and gray falls from the air That you will go on Walking, hearing The same tune no matter where You find yourself Inside the dome of dark Or under the cracking white Of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold Tell yourself What […]...
- To Winter Stay, season of calm love and soulful snows! There is a subtle sweetness in the sun, The ripples on the stream’s breast gaily run, The wind more boisterously by me blows, And each succeeding day now longer grows. The birds a gladder music have begun, The squirrel, full of mischief and of fun, From maples’ […]...
- LOVE AS A LANDSCAPE PAINTER ON a rocky peak once sat I early, Gazing on the mist with eyes unmoving; Stretch’d out like a pall of greyish texture, All things round, and all above it cover’d. Suddenly a boy appear’d beside me, Saying “Friend, what meanest thou by gazing On the vacant pall with such composure? Hast thou lost for […]...
- Alms My heart is what it was before, A house where people come and go; But it is winter with your love, The sashes are beset with snow. I light the lamp and lay the cloth, I blow the coals to blaze again; But it is winter with your love, The frost is thick upon the […]...
- Again And Again, However We Know The Landscape Of Love Again and again, however we know the landscape of love And the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, And the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others Fall: again and again the two of us walk out together Under the ancient trees, lie down again and again Among the flowers, face to face with […]...
- Landscape At The End Of The Century The sky in the trees, the trees mixed up With what’s left of heaven, nearby a patch Of daffodils rooted down Where dirt and stones comprise a kind Of night, unmetaphysical, cool as a skeptic’s Final sentence. What this scene needs Is a nude absentmindedly sunning herself On a large rock, thinks the man fed […]...
- As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter, I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? Written A. D. 819 Po Chu-i, balding old politician, What’s the use? I think of you, Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, When you were being towed up the rapids Toward some political job or other In […]...
- Musings On A Landscape Of Gaspar Poussin Poussin! most pleasantly thy pictur’d scenes Beguile the lonely hour; I sit and gaze With lingering eye, till charmed FANCY makes The lovely landscape live, and the rapt soul From the foul haunts of herded humankind Flies far away with spirit speed, and tastes The untainted air, that with the lively hue Of health and […]...
- In this World The hill pasture, an open place among the trees, Tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses Are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill Dark floodwater moves down the river. The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing. I have climbed up to water the horses And now sit and rest, […]...
- Landscape of a Pissing Multitude The men kept to themselves: They were waiting for the swiftness of the last cyclists. The women kept to themselves: They were expecting the death of a boy on a Japanese schooner. They all kept to themselves- Dreaming of the open beaks of dying birds, The sharp parasol that punctures A recently flattened toad, Beneath […]...