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These Winter nights against my window-pane
Nature with busy pencil draws designs
Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines,
Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines,
Which she will make when summer comes again--
Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold,
Like curious Chinese etchings.
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Source: Frost-Work
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O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark,
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
Author: William Blake
Source: To Winter
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When now, unsparing as the scourge of war,
Blasts follow blasts and groves dismantled roar;
Around their home the storm-pinched cattle lows,
No nourishment in frozen pasture grows;
Yet frozen pastures every morn resound
With fair abundance thund'ring to the ground.
Author: Robert Bloomfield
Source: The Farmer's Boy--Winter (st. 2)
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And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters
of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to
cruel and fierce storms. . . . For summer being done, all things
stand upon them with a weather-beaten face, and the whole
country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and
savage hue.
Author: William Bradford
Source: Of Plymouth Plantation
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Look! the massy trunks
Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray,
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,
That glimmer with an amethystine light.
Author: William Cullen Bryant
Source: A Winter Piece (l. 66)
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Yet all how beautiful! Pillars of pearl
Propping the cliffs above, stalactites bright
From the ice roof depending; and beneath,
Grottoes and temples with their crystal spires
And gleaming columns radiant in the sun.
Author: William Henry Burleigh
Source: Winter
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The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in
winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the
bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.
Author: John Burroughs
Source: The Snow-Walkers
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Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale
and shabby, old and sullen.
Author: Willa Sibert Cather
Source: My Antonia
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Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh,
Through the white and drifted snow.
Author: Mrs. Lydia Maria Child
Source: Flowers for Children--Thanksgiving Day
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The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind.
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source: Frost at Midnight (l. 1)
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Every Fern is tucked and set,
'Neath coverlet,
Downy and soft and warm.
Author: Susan Coolidge (pseudonym of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)
Source: Time to Go
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O Winter! ruler of the inverted year,
. . . .
I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb'd Retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Task (bk. IV, l. 120)
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There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--
Author: Emily Dickinson
Source: No. 258
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Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: The Snow-Storm
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Come, see the north-wind's masonry,
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: The Snow-Storm
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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.
Author: Robert Lee Frost
Source: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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Every mile is two in winter.
Author: George Herbert
Source: Jacula Prudentum
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On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence.
Author: John Keats
Source: On the Grasshopper and Cricket
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His breath like silver arrows pierced the air,
The naked earth crouched shuddering at his feet,
His finger on all flowing waters sweet
Forbidding lay--motion nor sound was there:--
Nature was frozen dead,--and still and slow,
A winding sheet fell o'er her body fair,
Flaky and soft, from his wide wings of snow.
Author: Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble (Mrs. Butler)
Source: Winter (l. 9)
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Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay--
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
Author: Charles Kingsley
Source: Saint's Tragedy (act III, sc. 1)
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Up rose the wild old winter-king,
And shook his beard of snow;
"I hear the first young hard-bell ring,
'Tis time for me to go!
Northward o'er the icy rocks,
Northward o'er the sea,
My daughter comes with sunny locks:
This land's too warm for me!"
Author: Charles Godfrey Leland
Source: Spring
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It snowed and snowed, the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.
Author: Boris Pasternak
Source: Doctor Zhivago
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But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews;
Arise, the pines a noxious shade diffuse;
Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay,
Time conquers all, and we must time obey.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: Ode to Winter (l. 85)
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Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Author: Ezra Pound
Source: The Ancient Mariner
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In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.
Author: Christina G. Rossetti
Source: A Christmas Carol
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