Beauty in Leafless Woods

Seer of the inner law,
     Reader of the constant fact,
Though the feebler souls withdraw
From the invaded court that saw
     His empress, Beauty, in a court that lacked
     No semblance fair of royal word or act,
The poet-soul stands reverent, as in trance
     Before the threshold upon her plundered wood;
A new delight exalts his peerless glance,
     Finding her strong, as he has found her good!
Distinctly as in summer’s dawn
     He sees her living spirit still
     On all the desolated hill,
Where the keen pencil of the blast has drawn,
     On the gray canvas of the sky,
     The sharp-lined tracery
Of naked trees, O! finer than the skill
Of man can copy! Every twig and branch,
     With thousand lines inexplicably twined,
     Faultless in clear betrayal of its kind,
Is pictured well, though heavens may gloom or blanch.
     Against the dark-brown orchard trees,
     Whose thousand stiff, contorted knees
And twisted arms might seem
     The limbs of titans in their overthrow,
How like old gold the pollard willows gleam,
     Warm with the noontide glow!
And all the buds that singly are unseen
     On the bare maples, tint with living red
The dusky woodlands were, between
     Their silvery boils the young oaks thrust, unshed
     Their russet foliage, clinging still, though dead,
To guard the spray that bore them;
While tauntingly before them
     The cynic holly lifts the polished green
     Of undeciduous leaves, curled, crisp, and keen,
As the thin lips of mockery!
                         Towering o’er them
The stately elm soars, mingling with the blue,
Lines ever slenderer till lost form view
     In a transparent nimbus, the dream-haze
     Of that leaf-cloud it bore in summer days!

O, queenly Beauty, deathless and divine,
Not for the wind and frost wilt thou resign
     Thine empire o’er the forest;
Nor when they smite the sorest
     Can I withhold my offering at thy shrine!