The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1899-02-17
Snow Bound.

Rose cherries over hills of gray
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat
1t sank from sight before it set.
Achill no coat, however stout
Ofhomespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
OF life-tlood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
OfOcean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did our nightly Chores
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Uttered the stalls and from the mows
Raked down the herds-gra for the COWS;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn:
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bel t
And down his querulous challenge sent
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm,
And whrl-dance of the binding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white DRIFT piled the window frame.
And through the glass the clothes line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
So all night long the storm roal | on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Natures geometric signs,
In starry flake and pellicle,
All day the hoary meteor fell;
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon Il world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the armament
No cloud above, no earth below
universe of sky and snow
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, towe
VI garden wall, or nelt OF wood;
smooth white mound the brush pile showed
fenceless drift that once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-tlung coat and high cooked hat.
All day the gusty north wind bore
The loosening drifts its breath before;
Low circling round it's southern zone,
4.
No church lent its Christian tone
To the savage ALL no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voiced elements,
The shrieking Of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
OF ghostiy fnger-tips of sleet.
Beyond The circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toll or mirth
Unbound the SPELL and testified
Ofhnman life and thought outside.
We minded that the shafpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Has been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, has grown
To have an almost human tone.
So days went on: week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac We studied DER,
Read and reread our little store,
OF books and pamphlets scarce score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, Tor good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Elwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heather Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David md the Jews.
At last the founderng carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
-IVhificr.