Classic Poem

Through a dumb-shifting veil of snow
I mark the trees. The chestnuts bare,
That reach black fingers up the air;
The beeches where, high branch and low,

The leaves still hang in russet ranks;
The oaks, whose leaves are scanter, more
Phantasmal-brown, mere ghosts of yore;
The elms, of shapelier tops and flanks.

And then the pines; sole guests in green
The winter does vouchsafe; they stand
Sedately, dropping from their hand
The pungent cones; dark, dark, I ween,

Their thoughts, and deep and manifold.
The winter grass seems doubly sere
Beneath their vital boughs that fear
No frost, that changeless front the cold.

These stately creatures all I view
As through an opal dimly; then,
Illimitable, mute to men,
Above, a sky of hodden gray
That lures the eye past every tree,
Into a tranced immensity.