Dear diary/column:
In honor of the growing amount of ice sitting on my car each and every morning, here are some winter-adjacent poems for the week.
Sonnet 97 (How like a winter hath my absence been) William Shakespeare
How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease: Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute; Or if they sing, ‘tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
To a Wreath of Snow Emily Bronte
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
Dust of Snow Robert Frost
The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.
The Dead of Winter Samuel Menashe
In my coat I sit At the window sill Wintering with snow That did not melt It fell long ago At night, by stealth I was where I am When the snow began.
Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News.