By the Mere.
Grey, dimly outlined ’neath the sullen skies,1
Lies the half-frozen mere, its silver face2
Veiled by the wintry gloaming : silent voiced,3
Cold, calm, and still as soft sweet maiden sleeps,4
A dreamless slumber, in her virgin shroud.5
The alder boughs are fringed with diamond drops,6
Rich pendent sparks that in the gloaming glint,7
And glow, and glitter with a thousand fires,8
Nature’s unsullied gems, chaste icicles.9
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The heavy clouds enwrapped in leaden gloom,10
Grow thick with gathering snow. The sobbing wind,11
In low dull angry murmurs o’er the fens,12
Brushes their reedy armies, whilst the boom13
Of the lone bittern, hermit of the waste,14
Sounds o’er the marsh, as sounds the knell of doom.15
The purple-crested mallard, from the sedge,16
Whirls whirring upward, with a clarion shrill,17
That bodes his quick alarm : the snow flakes fall,18
Fall thick and fast : and fast and faster still,19
Comes onward black-robed night : the landscape pales,20
The last faint gleams of twilight die away,21
A death-like stillness falls upon the fens22
And all is silent, as the reign of Death.23