For Mary Helen

The First Snows Came

A land of starkness where beauty's ways are taught

In frozen landscapes, nights of pale sun-bloom,

A silent world where Nature's face is caught

In icy depths that months of darkness tomb.

Smoke-grey skies descend to waters greyed

By glacier run that grinds the hard rock-pan,

Where the soul in things is cherished and obeyed

And the spirit gods dwell ever close to man.

A sea cut through with floes of shimmering blue

And sunset over mountains ridged with ice

A poetry of earth reborn anew,

From hidden depths disclosed her paradise.

The first snows came unnoticed in the night,

A powdered-sugar dusting on the crests,

The first snows came, their purifying white

Lulling to sleep a thousand weary breasts,

Calming the summer heart's pent energy

At labour in the busy world of green,

To pause awhile in deep felicity

Of winter's touch, pure and crystalline.