Classic Poem

The hard snow lies upon the hard round hills;
Unbroken silence fills
The empty valleys, and the unmoving air
Is thickened by the cold. The northward plain
Under a haze lies bleak and brown and bare,
Untouched by snow, and at its westerly rim
Loom dark and dim
The Malverns on the mist like a huge stain.

Turn, turn again
From that wet country to the snowy hills,
Where coldly in its silence the frost fills
The deep and rounded valleys with a fine
Jewel of air made crystalline.
The cold has frozen the air, the air's a gem,
Bright as a diamond filled with frozen light,
From the hill-tops down to the plain's wet hem,
Hard, yet clear to the sight.
Move not—we cannot move, we are prisoners,
Like that old traveller whom a later found
Within a shining ice-block straitly bound,
Staring immovably two hundred years
Across the waste, white ground.