Poetry Revisited: Winter by Frances Anne Kemble

Winter

(from Poems: 1859)

I saw him on his throne, far in the North,
Him ye call Winter, picturing him ever
An aged man, whose frame with palsied shiver
Bends o’er the fiery element, his foe.
But him I saw was a young god whose brow
Was crown’d with jagged icicles, and forth
From his keen spirit-like eyes there shone a light
Broad, glaring, and intensely cold and bright.
His breath, like sharp-edged arrows, pierced the air ;
The naked earth crouched shuddering at his feet ;
His finger on all murmuring waters sweet
Lay icily, motion nor sound was there;
Nature seem’d frozen dead; and still and slow
A winding sheet fell o’er her features fair,
Flaky and white from his white wings of snow.

Frances Anne Kemble (1809-1893)
British actress and writer