Winters Majesty

By Bellisima Benelli

 

 

poet Frederick George Scott

 

 

WINTER forests mutely standing

Naked on your bed of snow,

Wide your knotted arms expanding

To the biting winds that blow,

Nought ye heed of storm or stress,

Stubborn, silent, passionless.

 

Buried is each woodland treasure,

Gone the leaves and mossy rills,

Gone the birds that filled with pleasure

All the valleys and the hills;

Ye alone of all that host

Stand like soldiers at your post.

 

Grand old trees, the words ye mutter,

Nodding in the frosty wind,

Wake some thoughts I cannot utter,

But which haunt the heart and mind,

With a meaning, strange and deep,

As of visions seen in sleep.

 

Something in my inmost thinking

Tells me I am one with you,

For a subtle bond is linking

Nature's offspring through and through,

And your spirit like a flood

Stirs the pulses of my blood.

 

While I linger here and listen

To the crackling boughs above,

Hung with icicles that glisten

As if kindling into love,

Human heart and soul unite

With your majesty and might.

 

Horizontal, rich with glory,

Through the boughs the red sun's rays

Clothe you as some grand life-story

Robes an aged man with praise,

When, before his setting sun,

Men recount what he has done.

 

But the light is swiftly fading,

And the wind is icy cold,

And a mist the moon is shading,

Pallid in the western gold;

In the night-winds still ye nod,

Sentinels of Nature's God.

 

Now with laggard steps returning

To the world from whence I came,

Leave I all the great West burning

With the day that died in flame, .

And the stars, with silver ray,

Light me on my homeward way.

Frederick George Scott

Done