Earthsleep

Winter Magpie  Claude Monet

from Lines: The Cold Earth Slept Below

By Percy Byssche Shelley

The cold earth slept below;

Above the cold sky shone;

And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow

The breath of night like death did flow

Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black;

The green grass was not seen;

The birds did rest

On the bare thorn’s breast,

Whose roots, beside the pathway track,

Had bound their folds o’er many a crack

Which the frost had made between.

Mood Change

from Winter Album  Imao Keinen  

Dust of Snow

By 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

Folly

Love in an Italian Theater  Jean Antoine Watteau

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind 

by William Shakespeare 

from As You Like It

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most freindship if feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,

That does not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As a friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most freindship if feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Winter's Song

Village at Winter at Midnight  Jacob van Ruisdael

"Be Off!"

 by Victor Hugo

"Be off!" say Winter's snows;

"Now it's my turn to sing!"

So, startled, quivering,

Not daring to oppose

(Our fortitude grows dim in

The face of a Quos ego),

Away, my songs, must we go

Before those virile women!

Rain. We are forced to fly,

Everywhere, utterly.

End of the comedy.

Come, swallows, it's good-bye.

Wind, sleet. The branches sway,

Writhing their stunted limbs,

And off the white smoke swims

Across the heavens' gray.

A pallid yellow lingers

Over the chilly dale.

My keyhole blows a gale

Onto my frozen fingers.

Winter's Pull

A Snowy Landscape  Cuno Amiet

Spellbound

by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing dear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

Wintertime Noises

An Old Man's Winter Night 

by Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him

Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

That brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

In clomping there, he scared it once again

In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon, such as she was,

So late-arising, to the broken moon

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,

A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It's thus he does it of a winter night.

A Wee Bit o' Scotland in the Winter

A Flock of Sheep in a Snowstorm  Joseph Farquharson

A Winter Night

by Robert Burns

When biting Boreas, fell and doure,

Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r;

When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r,

Far south the lift,

Dim-dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r,

Or whirling drift:

Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,

Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked,

While burns, wi' snawy wreeths upchoked,

Wild-eddying swirl,

Or thro' the mining outlet bocked,

Down headlong hurl.

List'ning, the doors an' winnocks rattle,

I thought me on the ourie cattle,

Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle

O' winter war,

And thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle,

Beneath a scar.

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing!

That, in the merry months o' spring,

Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What comes o' thee?

Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing

An' close thy e'e?

Ev'n you on murd'ring errands toil'd,

Lone from your savage homes exil'd,

The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cote spoil'd

My heart forgets,

While pityless the tempest wild

Sore on you beats.