Winter Related Poems
A Winter Remembered
By: John Crowe Ransom
Two evil, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of abscence,abscenece, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.
Think no,when fire was bright upoun my brick
and past the tight broads hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause,my proper heat and center.
Better to walk forth in the frozen air
And wash my wound in the snow; that would be healing
Because my heart would throb less painfully there,
Being caked with cold and past the smart of feeling.
And where i walked, the murderous winter blast
Would have this body bowed,these eyeballs streaing,
And through i think this heart's blood froze not fast
It ran too small to spare one drop for dreaming.
Dear love, these fingers that had known your touch,
And tied our seperate forces first together,
Were ten poor idiots fingers not worth much,
Ten frozen parsnips hanging in the weather.
Now Winter Nights Enlarge
By: Thomas Campion
Now winter nights enlarge This 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-tuned words amaze With harmony divine...
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.
Along the Hard Crust...
By: Anna Akhmatova
The city is caught in the grip of ice--
Trees, walls, snow, are as under glass.
Over crystals, I and the patterned sleighs
Go our separate, unsteady ways.
Along the hard crust of deep snows,
To the secret, white house of yours,
So gentle and quiet – we both
Are walking, in silence half-lost.
And sweeter than all songs, sung ever,
Are this dream, becoming the truth,
Entwined twigs’ a-nodding with favor,
The light ring of your silver spurs...
Fishing in Winter
By: Ralph Burns
A man staring at a small lake sees His father cast light line out over The willows.
He's forgotten his Father has been dead for two years And the lake is where a blue fog Rolls,
and the sky could be,
if it Were black or blue or white,
The backdrop of all attention.
He wades out to join the father,
Following where the good strikes Seem to lead.
It's cold.
The shape Breath takes on a cold day is like Anything else--a rise on a small lake,
The Oklahoma hills, blue scrub--
A shape already inside a shape,
Two songs,
two breaths on the water.