Frost-flowers

Over my window in pencillings white,
Stealthily traced in the silence of night -
Traced with a pencil as viewless as air,
By an artist unseen, when the star-beams were fair,
Came wonderful pictures, so life-like and true
That I'm filled with amaze as the marvel I view.

Like, and yet unlike the things I have seen, -
Feathery ferns in the forest-depths green,
Delicate mosses that hide from the light,
Snow-drops, and lilies, and hyacinths white,
Fringes, and feathers, and half-opened flowers,
Closely-twined branches of dim, cedar bowers -
Strange, that one hand should so deftly combine
Such numberless charms in so quaint a design!

O wondrous creations of silence and night!
I watch as ye fade in the clear morning light, -
As ye melt into tear-drops and trickle away
From the keen, searching eyes of inquisitive Day.
While I gaze ye are gone, and I see you depart
With a wistful regret lying deep in my heart, -
A longing for something that will not decay,
Or melt like these frost-flowers in tear-drops away, -
A passionate yearning of heart for that shore
Where beauty unfading shall last evermore;
Nor, e'en as we gaze, from our vision be lost
Like the beautiful things that are pencilled in frost!