winter
A Cold Night
A snowy icy night, painted hill tops all are white,
all the rivers flow like ice, and raindrops fall as hail,
from so very, very high, above.
Whispered breath, a smoky kind of grey,
as I wander in the coldness of my winter dreams,
trees stretching skywards hold distant memories
of rustled leaves and a lazy warming friendly breeze.
I so much love you and I want you by my side
in the coldness of this dark and lonely frozen hour.
Your lips are all I ever miss,
as I stand here cold and with a sense of helplessness
waiting for your kiss to bring back love and summertime
to the chilled and bitter darkness, that I often find.
On this snowy icy night of my winter dreams
please hurry, come back home to me
and bring that warm and gentle loving face,
the one that I do miss so very much.
How I wish that you were always here
then nothing would we ever fear
and even in the cold and dark
our love will keep us safe and warm
until the coming of the calm and gentle, warming, dawn.
– David Taylor
http://www.aromaticcoffees.co.uk
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
– Robert Hayden
http://www.aromaticcoffees.co.uk
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
– Robert Frost
http://www.aromaticcoffees.co.uk
Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind
Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most freindship if feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As a friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
– William Shakespear
http://www.aromaticcoffes.co.uk
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Winter Morning
Winter Morning
All night the wind swept over the house
And through our dream
Swirling the snow up through the pines,
Ruffling the white, ice-capped clapboards,
Rattling the windows,
Rustling around and below our bed
So that we rode
Over wild water
In a white ship breasting the waves.
We rode through the night
On green, marbled
Water, and, half-waking, watched
The white, eroded peaks of icebergs
Sail past our windows;
Rode out the night in that north country,
And awoke, the house buried in snow,
Perched on a
Chill promontory, a
Giant’s tooth
In the mouth of the cold valley,
Its white tongue looped frozen around us,
The trunks of tall birches
Revealing the rib cage of a whale
Stranded by a still stream;
And saw, through the motionless baleen of their branches,
As if through time,
Light that shone
On a landscape of ivory,
A harbor of bone
– William Jay Smith (1918)
Ode To The West Wind
Ode To The West Wind
I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
II Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
– Percy Bysshe Shelley
As Winter Raged
Winter was at war. Her subterfuge: Crumble grey-white flakes upon the scene.
The air, dead; Dead too, the sound – Blunted by the whitewash. Motion, dead – Bluing chill saw to that.
Everything ground to a halt – Like an empty train, crawling, seizing; Eventually to die sprawled along a ghosted platform – A lifeless plain of concrete.
I still had far to go – Or so this brain computed – Tried to – Inside my own raging storm of white noise, Howling in its desperation.
Now wild, blitz-wild, I bore an irrepressible thought – A goal, focus, idée fixe:
To clasp a frosted hand around A radiant mug of sugar-laden Calorie-heavy Full-fat milk chocolate – Steam wraiths writhing over A freshly-spooned whirlpool, Sultry in their invitation: ‘Come, sip, sip some more; Soothe yourself in balmy richness.’
I still had far to go…
– Mark Slaughter
Winter
There are no words for this
this aching, groaning, growling, moaning
feeling inside
like everything is frozen solid…
by a cold winter’s day
a cloudy day with no warmth to it
an icy day with no love in it
it never ends
this constant numbness
until you get frostbite, gangrene
and then your heart dies
a broken, frozen
ugly thing discovered by some poor soul
who will forever be tormented by its memory
of your heart
disfigured and hateful
spiteful and jaded
angry, jealous, crying all the time
untrusting and cynical
you’ll never survive this winter of ice
this winter of cold winds
and no love
this winter of fear and ‘freedom’
this winter of death and deceit
this winter of decay
– Joanna Hamilton
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