Classic Poem

Out of my vanished winters
One memory sends a glow;
'T is the face of a child at a window
Upturned to the falling snow.

His hair streams downward golden,
And pansy-deep are the eyes
That he lifts to the flying snowflakes
Poured endlessly out of the skies.

You deem he is watching them falling;
Ah! no, on those wings that fly
With the snow so swiftly downward
He is mounting in thought on high.

For to him not the snow is falling,
But he is soaring aloft,
And the wings that bear him upward
Are the snowflakes white and soft.

Far, far has the earth receded,
The end of his way is at hand;
It looms already above him,
The portal of Fairyland.

But just as he dimly sees it,
He starts at a sweet-voiced call, —
And lo! he stands at the window,
Watching the snowflakes fall.

In a moment more he had found it,
The land of the story-books' lore,
But now he has lost it forever,
The wings will not lift him more.

Since then long leagues he has journeyed,
But never again might go
So near to the Gates of Wonder
As then on the wings of the snow.