Winter: Images from the NOBLE Digital Library

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.

And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.

“Where, from their frozen urns, mute
springs

Pour out the rivers gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater s iron rings,
And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas ! how changed from the fair scene,
When birds sang out their mellow lay,

But still wild music is abroad,
Pale, desert woods ! within your
crowd ;

And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

Chill airs and wintry winds ! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song ;

I hear it in the opening year,
I listen, and it cheers me long.

–Woods in Winter, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow