Ice Crystals

Ye may have seen, when, on some winter morn,

   The first warm breath of home-life, waked again,

   Touched with a kiss the cold-cheek'd window pane,

Into what fine and delicate figures drawn,

The keen ice crystals mock'd the viney lawn;

   How the sharp shuttles of the invisible frost

Wove their swift shapes of beauty, flower and tree,

   Till bough on bough, with foliage intercross'd,

The bright mass grew to thick obscurity.

So with fine thrillings of unuttered Thought,

   Clear Beauty trembles through the Poet's brain,

Into fair shapes by its own shrinking wrought,-

   His heart-breath crystalized with delicious pain,

Soothed by some silent hope to bless the earth-

Till crowding, form on form, to be borne forth

   Into full utterance, all its life is lost;

   Stark lies the Beauty in expression's frost,

Frigid, confounded, and of little worth.