The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white.

They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne; Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan.

Along A River-Side, I Know Not Where, I walked one night in mystery of dream; A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, To think what chanced me by the pall…

The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth…

When men were all asleep the snow came flying, In large white flakes falling on the city brown, Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying, Hushing …

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinkling…

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the riv…