WINTER MOONLIGHT.

SOFTLY falls the silver rain, through the boughs that shade the lane,

On the white pools and the dead leaves that lie matted blackly there;

Deepest night's soft lambent fire burns upon yon stately spire,

In the distant fallow glitters, like a marsh-light, the ploughshare.

All the sky is clear and blue, keen the fleecy cloudlets through

Shine the stars, that sparkle frosty mid the grey drift rippling white,

Heap'd like mountains vapour hidden, change the white clouds, at God's bidding,

Into countless bands of angels, guarding earth and heaven by night.

The great archangel of the sky seems to guide them as they fly,

Every white flint on the dark clod glimmers whiter to the moon;

All the voices of the dead are around us as we

tread,

Voices that are with us ever, night and morning, late and soon,

Clear the dew-drops crystalline glitter as the moonbeams shine,

Bright the stubble crisp and frosty glints into the azure light,

Now the clouded moon is brightening, and the lòng drear road is whitening,

Now the wind, in gusty billows, tries to rend the chains of night.

Silver flaming on the wall, pale-winged, wavering moonbeams fall,

Like the strange, unearthly shadows of a guardian angel's face,

Very strange and very holy, striking awe in us and wholly,

As a benediction coming to the dark and lonely

place.

Then the silver shadows waver, very weird in their

behaviour,

Blue and amber is the sky where their whiteflamed glory falls,

Low-voiced winds are in the boughs, all around the sleeping house,

Waving up the ancient pictures and the hangings on the walls.

Heavy branches bent and bowing, now and then a distant lowing

From the meadow cold and silent, from the pasture hushed and still;

All the chamber windows barred, and the frosted. casements starred

With the blurrings of death's finger, very palsied, very chill.

Now the pale dim golden cloud doth the moon a moment shroud,

Now the sky is white and fleecy, veined with soft and vapoury blue.

Throbbing holy, deep and tender as the eyes of maiden slender,

When a youth looks down into them, and sees childlove peeping through.

While without earth lies so holy, silent, calm-as

pale and lowly,

As a virgin abbess kneeling at a lonely midnight shrine,

All is not asleep within, there are wakers flushed with sin,

Fevered eyes that, in the night lamp, like a jewelled idol's shine.

Now within a thousand houses sin, (and lust her sister,) rouses,

Pallid faces hard and cruel watch sick men who

calmly sleep;

Joy lies down worn pale with pleasure, and the miser dreams of treasure,

While Grief sits awake, and listens to her children as they weep.

Spendthrifts, count the throbs of breath, curse the slow, delaying death,

Rub the dusty-hoarded jewels in the long-locked cabinet,

Weigh the massy silver spoons, or play slow but merry tunes

On the gittern, while they finger the rich ruby

carcanet.

Yet without is fairy land, blue waves 'on a silver

strand

Break with music that we feel, but we strive in vain to hear;

All the dark shapes on the lawn dance and bend until the dawn,

Like a pale avenging angel, calmly rising, doth

appear.

Where the dead and bleached pine on the hill doth ghastly shine,

By the valley and the way-post and the Dead man's broken cross,

Soft the snow slopes bare and cold, to the long and barren wold,

Where the boughs, like madmen praying, dark against the white sky toss.

Now the pious child awaking is with holy awe o'ertaken,

As he sees two fiery eye-balls shining on him through the dark;

But he knows from the Evangels, that a pair of blessed angels

Watch our slumbers, as the pilot does the tempestwildered bark.