All the land lies muffled in snow,
The steady north winds heavily blow,
The tops of the oaks are lost in the sky,
The drooping cedars bend to the ground,
The rose-bush is drifted into a mound,
And still from the somber clouds without sound
The white flakes whirling fly.

The fallow fields are buried deep,
The hedges hang in a tangled heap,
And racing rabbits under them stop,
While the wrens and sparrows flit and hop
In the sheltering briars and huddle to rest
From the stormy eve in their snow-hung nest.

The highway to the distant town,
Which wound through the tall trees yesterday,
In the wide white waste has faded away.
The fences are hid under dunes of down.
The long straight lane lies trackless and white,
And the rugged hill with its windy height,
Yesterday nothing but rock and clod,
Now looks like a wall of the city of God.

O life—O death—so dark, so drear—
I think as I sit in the gray light here,
Apart from the hearth at whose warm light
Friends and lovers will meet to-night
With Christmas greeting and laughter and song,
Of one whose voice has been hushed so long—
Of lips and of eyes that are folded low
Under the drifts of the falling snow.