Flame And Snow

The bare branches rose against the gray sky. Under them, freshly fallen, snow shone to the eye. Up the hill--slope, over the brow it shone, Spreading an immaterial beauty to tread upon. In the elbow of black boughs it clung, nested white, And smooth below it slept in the solitude of its light. It was deep to the knee in the hollow; there in a stump of wood I struck my bill--hook, warm to the fingers' blood, and stood, Pausing, and breathed and listened: all the air around Was filled with busy strokes and ringing of clean sound, And now and again a crack and a slow rending, to tell When a tree heavily tottered and swift with a crash fell. I smelt the woody smell of smoke from the fire, now Beginning to spurt from frayed bracken and torn bough In the lee of a drift, fed from our long morning toil And sending smart to the eyes the smoke in a blue coil. I lopped the twigs from a fresh--cut pole and tossed it aside To the stakes heaped beyond me, and made a plunging stride, And gathered twines of bramble and dead hazel sticks And a faggot of twisted thorn with snow lumped in the pricks, And piled the smoulder high. Soon a blaze tore Up through hissing boughs and shrivelling leaves, from a core Of quivering crimson; soon the heat burst and revelled, And apparitions of little airy flames dishevelled Gleamed and vanished, a lost flight as of elfin wings, Trembling aloft to the wild music that Fire sings Dancing alive from nothing, lovely and mad. And still The snow, pale as a dream, slept on the old hill, Softly fallen and strange. Which made me more to glow, Beauty of young flames, or wonder of young snow?