Silver-White.

Jacobs, Jack Frost, n/d

JACK FROST

The door was shut, as doors should be,

 Before you went to bed last night;

Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,

 And left your window silver-white.

He must have waited till you slept;

 And not a single word he spoke,

But pencilled o’er the panes and crept

 Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills

 Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;

But there are fairer things than these

 His fingers traced on every pane.

Rocks and castles towering high;

 Hills and dales, and streams and fields;

And knights in armor riding by,

 With nodding plumes and shining shields.

And here are little boats, and there

 Big ships with sails spread to the breeze;

And yonder, palm trees waving fair

 On islands set in silver seas,

And butterflies with gauzy wings;

 And herds of cows and flocks of sheep;

And fruit and flowers and all the things

 You see when you are sound asleep.

For, creeping softly underneath

 The door when all the lights are out,

Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,

 And knows the things you think about.

He paints them on the window-pane

 In fairy lines with frozen steam;

And when you wake you see again

 The lovely things you saw in dream.

Gabriel Setoun

Sheen.

Rackham, Jack Frost, 1910

THE FROST

The frost looked forth one still, clear night,

And whispered, Now I shall be out of sight;

So through the valley and over the height,

In silence I'll take my way.

I will not go on like that blustering train,

The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,

Who make so much bustle and noise in vain,

But I'll be as busy as they!

Then he flew to the mountain, and powdered its crest;

He lit on the trees, and their boughs he drest

In diamond beads -- and over the breast

Of the quivering lake, he spread

A coat of mail, that it need not fear

The downward point of many a spear,

That he hung on its margin, far and near,

Where a rock could rear its head.

He went to the windows of those who slept,

And over each pane, like a fairy, crept;

Wherever he breathed, wherever he stepped,

By the light of the morn were seen

Most beautiful things; there were flowers and trees;

There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees;

There were cities with temples and towers; and these

All pictured in silver sheen!

But he did one thing that was hardly fair

He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there,

That all had forgotten for him to prepare,

Now, just to set them a-thinking,

I'll bite this basket of fruit, said he,

This costly pitcher I'll burst in three;

And the glass of water they've left for me

Shall 'tchick!' to tell them I'm drinking!

 Hannah Flagg Gould

Ministry.

FROST at MIDNIGHT

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry

Came loud, -and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings-on of life,

Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft

With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birthplace, and the old church-tower,

Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang

From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

And so I brooded all the following morn,

Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,

Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

My playmate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Creeping.

JACK FROST

The door was shut, as doors should be,

 Before you went to bed last night;

Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,

 And left your window silver white.

He must have waited till you slept;

 And not a single word he spoke,

But pencilled o’er the panes and crept

 Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills

 Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;

But there are fairer things than these

 His fingers traced on every pane.

Rocks and castles towering high;

 Hills and dales, and streams and fields;

And knights in armor riding by,

 With nodding plumes and shining shields.

And here are little boats, and there

 Big ships with sails spread to the breeze;

And yonder, palm trees waving fair

 On islands set in silver seas,

And butterflies with gauzy wings;

 And herds of cows and flocks of sheep;

And fruit and flowers and all the things

 You see when you are sound asleep.

For, creeping softly underneath

 The door when all the lights are out,

Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,

 And knows the things you think about.

He paints them on the window-pane

 In fairy lines with frozen steam;

And when you wake you see again

 The lovely things you saw in dream.

Gabriel Setoun