Winter with the Gulf Stream

The boughs, the boughs are bare enough, But earth has not yet felt the snow. Frost-fringed our ivies are, and rough With spiked rime the brambles show, The hoarse leaves crawl on hissing ground, What time the sighing wind is low. But if the rain-blasts be unbound, And from dank feathers wring the drops, The clogg’d brook runs with choking sound, Kneading the mounded mire that stops His channel under clammy coats Of foliage fallen in the copse. A single passage of weak notes Is all the winter bird dare try. The moon, half-orb’d, ere sunset floats So glassy-white about the sky, So like a berg of hyaline, Pencill’d with blue so daintily— I never saw her so divine. But thro’ black branches—rarely drest In streaming scarfs that smoothly shine, Shot o’er with lights—the emblazon’d west, Where yonder crimson fire-ball sets, Trails forth a purfled-silken vest. Long beds I see of violets In beryl lakes which they reef o’er: A Pactolean river frets Against its tawny-golden shore: All ways the molten colours run: Till, sinking ever more and more Into an azure mist, the sun Drops down engulf’d, his journey done.