Excerpt from Vigil and Vision: New Sonnets
January.
This is the bitter birth-month of the year.
The sun looms large against the leaden sky,
Rayless and red, as 'twere a giant's eye,
That through the mists of death abroad doth peer:
The fettered earth is dumb for frosty cheer,
Veiling its face to let the blast go by.
Who said, "Spring cometh"? Out upon the lie!
Spring's dead and buried: January's here.
Shut to the door; heap logs upon the fire.
If in your heart there harbour yet some heat,
Some sense of flowers and light and Summer-sweet,
In some half-fabulous dream of days foregone
Remembered, feed withal hope's funeral pyre,
So you may live to look upon the dawn.
February.
How long, o Lord, how long the Winter's woes?
Is it to purge the world of sin and stain
That in its winding-sheet it stands again
For penance, pining in the shrouded snows?
Methinks, I do remember of the rose
To have heard fable in some far domain
Of old fantastic dreams and fancies vain;
But what in sooth it was, God only knows'
Was ever aught but Winter in the land
Was ever snow time past and Springtime come,
To bless the brown earth with her flowerful hands?
Well nigh the cuckoo's call, the wild bee's hum
Have we forgot. Yet, through the chill snow-cope
The kindly crocus blooms and bids us hope.
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