These are my favorite English and American winter poems written through the ages. These poems, like winter, provoke thought and introspection.
Wynter wakeneth al my care: Anonymous
Wynter wakeneth al my care,
Nou this leves waxeth bare;
Ofte I sike ant mourne sare
When hit cometh in my thoht
Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht…
Thomas Hardy, ‘The Darkling Thrush‘.
I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires…
Emily Dickinson, ‘It sifts from leaden sieves‘.
It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
On stump and stack and stem, —
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them…
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Winter: Lawrence Spiro
Night walks from dusk towards shivering stars.
The stroll is slow and long with crisp snaps
broken ice and clawing clutching wind.
Darkness drips, seeps, freeze dragging slowly
retired dawn reeling to awake.
Greyred blaze ignites the fleeting day
hours, seem minutes, minute second
deepblack chrystalize then starts over.
Night walks from dusk towards shivering stars.
