We looked upon a world unknown,

On nothing we could call our own.

Around the glistening wonder bent

The blue walls of the firmament,

No cloud above, no earth below,—

A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat		and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had		a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell

Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath

Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”

Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy

Count such a summons less than joy?)

Our buskins on our feet we drew;

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,

To guard our necks and ears from snow,

We cut the solid whiteness through.

And, where the drift was deepest, made

A tunnel walled and overlaid

With dazzling crystal: we had read

Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,

And to our own his name we gave,

With many a wish the luck were ours

To test his lamp’s supernal powers.

We reached the barn with merry din,

And roused the prisoned brutes within.

The old horse thrust his long head out,

And grave with wonder gazed about;

The cock his lusty greeting said,

And forth his speckled harem led;

The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,

And mild reproach of hunger looked;

The hornéd patriarch of the sheep,

Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,

Shook his sage head with gesture mute,

And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore

The loosening drift its breath before;

Low circling round its southern zone,

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.

No church-bell lent its Christian tone

To the savage air, no social smoke

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.

A solitude made more intense

By dreary voicéd elements,

The shrieking of the mindless wind,

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,

And on the glass the unmeaning beat

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.

Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth

Unbound the spell, and testified

Of human life and thought outside.

We minded that the sharpest ear

The buried brooklet could not hear,

The music of whose liquid lip

Had been to us companionship,

And, in our lonely life, had grown

To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest

Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,

The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank

From sight beneath the smothering bank,

We piled, with care, our nightly stack

Of wood against the chimney-back,—

The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,

And on its top the stout back-stick;

The knotty forestick laid apart,

And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,

We watched the first red blaze appear,

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,

Until the old, rude-furnished room

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;

While radiant with a mimic flame

Outside the sparkling drift became,

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.

The crane and pendent trammels showed,

The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;

While childish fancy, prompt to tell

The meaning of the miracle,

Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,

When fire outdoors burns merrily,

There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood

Shone at its full; the hill-range stood

Transfigured in the silver flood,

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine

Took shadow, or the sombre green

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black

Against the whiteness at their back.

For such a world and such a night

Most fitting that unwarming light,

Which only seemed where’er it fell

To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,

We sat the clean-winged hearth about,

Content to let the north-wind roar

In baffled rage at pane and door,

While the red logs before us beat

The frost-line back with tropic heat;

And ever, when a louder blast

Shook beam and rafter as it passed,

The merrier up its roaring draught

The great throat of the chimney laughed,

The house-dog on his paws outspread

Laid to the fire his drowsy head,

The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall

A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;

And, for the winter fireside meet,

Between the andirons’ straddling feet,

The mug of cider simmered slow,

The apples sputtered in a row,

And, close at hand, the basket stood

With nuts from brown October’s wood.