A Song for Winter
Speak not of snow and cold and rime
Now they prevail.
Would you have joy in winter-time,
Think of the pale
New green that comes, of blossoming lilacs think,
Larkspur, and borders of the fringèd pink.
And sing, if winter grants you heart to sing,
Of summer and of spring.
Would you secure some happiness
In frosty hours,
Trust to the eye external less
Than to the powers
Of inward sight that even now may show
Opaline seas, blue hilltops, and the glow
Of daybreak on the glades where thrushes sing
In summer and in spring.
Gaze not on fettered lake and brook
And sullen skies,
But in your happy memory look
Where beauty lies
As once it was, as it shall be again
When sunshine floods the fields of blowing grain,
And sing, as must who would in winter sing,
Of summer and of spring.
Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer