To a wreath of snow Emily Brontë

O transient voyager of heaven!

O silent sign of winter skies! What adverse wind thy sail has driven To dungeons where a prisoner lies? 

Methinks the hands that shut the sun So sternly from this morning’s brow Might still their rebel task have done And checked a thing so frail as thou. 

They would have done it had they known The talisman that dwelt in thee, For all the suns that ever shone Have never been so kind to me! 

For many a week, and many a day My heart was weighed with sinking gloom When morning rose in mourning grey And faintly lit my prison room

 But angel like, when I awoke, Thy silvery form, so soft and fair Shining through darkness, sweetly spoke Of cloudy skies and mountains bare; 

The dearest to a mountaineer Who, all life long has loved the snow That crowned his native summits drear, Better, than greenest plains below. 

And voiceless, soulless, messenger Thy presence waked a thrilling tone That comforts me while thou art here And will sustain when thou art gone 

Now winter nights enlarge Thomas Campion 

Now winter nights enlarge The number of their hours; And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine, Let well-turned words amaze With harmony divine. Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights Sleep’s leaden spells remove. This time doth well dispense With lovers’ long discourse; Much speech hath some defense, Though beauty no remorse. All do not all things well; Some measures comely tread, Some knotted riddles tell, Some poems smoothly read. The summer hath his joys, And winter his delights; Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, They shorten tedious nights.

Winter Trees William Carlos Williams

 All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.

 Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News. Poems in this column were found at poetryfoundation. org.